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CHRONICLES ^ OF CARLINGFORD. 

I 

% Notjd, 


BY THE AUTHOR OP 

MARGARET MAITLAND,” “THE LAIRf) OF NOELAW,” “THE LAST OF TIH: MORTIMERS,” 
“ THE DAYS OF MY LIFE,” “ THE HOUSE ON THE MOOR," 

“THE LIFE OF EDWARD IRVING," &c. 



NEW YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. 

{Stereotyped by Littell^ Son tfr Co., Boston.) 

1 8 63 . 



The’ Life of Edward Irving, Minister of 

the National Scotch Church, London. Illustrated by 
his Journals and Correspondence. Portrait. 8vo, 
Cloth, .$3 75. 

/• 

Chronicles of Carlingford. Complete. 
8 VO, Paper, 75 cents; Cloth, $100. 

The Last of the Mortimers: a Story in 

Two Voices. 12mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

Lucy Crofton. 12mo, Cloth, 94 cents. 

Katie Stewart. A True Story. 8vo, Pa- 
per, 31 cents. 


The Days of My Life. An Autobiography. 
12mo, Cloth, 94 cents. 

The Laird of Norlaw. A Scottish Story. 
* 12mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

The House on the Moor. 12mo, Cloth, 
$1 25. 

The Athelings; or, The Three Gifts. 8vo, 

Paper, 62 cents. 

The Quiet Heart. A Novel. 8vo, Paper, 
31 cents. 


Published By HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, New York. 



13 


THE EXECUTOR. 


THE EXECUTOR. 

CHAPTER I. 

“ The woman was certainly mad,” said 
John Brown. 

It was the most extraordinary of speeches, 
considering the circumstances and place in 
which it was spoken. A parlor of very 
grim and homely aspect, furnished with 
ark mahogany and black haircloth, the 
)linds of the two window's solemnly drawn 
dowm, the shutters of one-half closed ; 
two traditional decanters of wine standing 
reflected in the shining, uncovered table ; 
half a dosen people all in mourning, in 
various attitudes of surprise, disappoint- 
ment, and displeasure ; and close by one 
of the window's Mr. Brown, the attorney, 
holding up to the light that extraordinary 
scrap of paper, which had fallen upon them 
all like a thunderbolt. Only half an hour 
ago he had attended her funeral with deco- 
rum and perfect indiflerence, as was natural, 
and had come into this parlor without the 
slightest idea of encountering any thing 
which could disturb him. Fate, how'cver, 
had been lying in w'ait for the unsuspecting 
man at the moment he feared it least. He 
had not been employed to draw out this ex- 
traordinary document, nor had he known 
any thing about it. It W'as a thunderbolt 
enclosed in a simple envelope, very securely 
sealed up, and delivered to him w'ith great 
solemnity by the next of kin, which carried 
him, off his balance like a charge of artillery, 
and made everybody aghast around him. 
The sentiment and exclamation were alike 
natural : but the woman was not mad. 

By the side of the table, very pale and 
profoundly discomposed, sat the next of 
kin ; a woman, of appearance not unaccord- 
ant with that of' the house, over fifty, dark- 
complexioned and full of wrinkles, with a cer- 
tain cloud of habitual shabbiness, not to be 
cast aside, impairing the perfection of her 
new mourning. Her, new mourning, poor 
soul ! got on the strength of that letter con- 
taining the will, which had been placed in 
her safekeeping. She w'as evidently doing 
every thing s batim ilfl to command herself, 
and conceal he3| agitation. But it was not a 
very easy matter. Cherished visions of 
years, and hopes that this morning had 
seemed on the point of settling into reality, 
were breaking up b^ore her, each with its 


3 

poignant circumstances of mortification and 
bitterness and dread disappointment. She 
looked at everybody in the room with a 
kind of agonized appeal — cq|fld 4t really be 
true, might not her ears have deceived 
her ? — and strained her troubled gaze upon 
that paper, not without an in^inctive 
thought that it w'as wrongly read, or misun- 
derstood, or that some mysterious change 
had taken place on it in the transfer from 
her possession to that of Mr. Brown. His 
amazement and dismay did not convince the 
poor dismayed w'oman. She stretched out her 
hand eagerly to get the paper to read it for 
herself. He might have changed it in read- 
ing it ; he might have missed something, or 
added something, that altered the meaning. 
Any thing might have happened, rather than 
the reality that her confidence had been de- 
ceived and her hopes W'ere gone. 

“ Did you know of this, Mrs. Christian ? ” 
said the rector, who stood at the other end 
of the room with hi^hat in his hand. 

Did she know ! She could have gnashed 
her teeth at the foolish question, in her ex- 
citement and exasperation. She made a 
hysterical motion with her head to answer. 
Her daughter, who had come to the back of 
her chair, and who knew the rector must 
not be offended, supplied the words that 
failed to her mother : “ No ; we thought w'O 
were to have it,” said the poor girl, inno- 
cently. There was a little movement of sym- 
pathy and compassion among the other per- 
sons present. But mingled with this came a 
sound of a different description ; a cough, 
not an expression of physical weakness, 
but of moral sentiment ; an irritating, criti-. 
cal, inarticulate remark upon that melan- 
, choly avowal. It came from the only other 
woman present, the servant of the house. 
When the disappointed relation heard it, 
she j^ushed into sudden rage, and made an 
immediate identification of her enemy. It 
was not dignified, but it^ya^ very natural. 
Perhaps, under th^^ ch'cum'^anccs, it was 
the only relief which her feelings could have 
had. 

“ But I know wtose doing it was !” said 
poor Mrs. Christian, trembling all over, her 
pale face reddening with passion. There 
was a little movement at the door as the 
servant-woman stepped farther into the room 
to take her part in the scene which inter- 
ested her keenly. She was a tall woman 


THE EXECUTOR. 


thin and dry, and about the same age as 
her accuser. There was even a certain de- 
gree of likeness between them. As Nancy’s 
tall person and v/hite apron became clearly 
visible from among the little group of gen- 
tlemen, Mrs. Christian rose, inspired with 
ail the heat and passion of her disappoint- 
ment, to face her foe. 

“ Did you know of this ? ” said the excel- 
lent rector, with his concerned malaprop 
face. Nancy did not look at him. The 
three women stood regarding each other 
across the table ; the others were only spec- 
tators — they were the persons concerned. 
The girl who had already spoken, and wli^ 
was a little fair creature, as different from 
the belligerents as possible, stood holding 
her mother’s hand tightly. She had her 
eyes on them both, with an extraordinary 
air of control and unconscious authority. 
They were both full of rage and excitement, 
the climax of a long-smouldering quarrel ; 
but the blue eyes that ;v\'atched, kept them 
silent against their will. The crisis lasted 
only for a moment. Poor Mrs. Christian, 
yielding to the impulse of the small fingers 
that closed so tightN on her hand, fell back 
^"on her chair, and auempted to recover her 
shattered dignity. Nancy withdrew to the 
door ; and Mr. Brown repeated the excla- 
mation in which his dismay and trouble had 
at first expressed itself, “ Certainly, the 
woman must have been mad ! ” 

“ Will you have the goodness to let me 
see it ? ” said Mrs. Christian, with a gasp. 
It is impossible to say what ideas of tearing 
it up, or throwing it into the smouldering 
fire, might have mingled with her desire ; 
but, in the first place, she was eager to see 
if she could not make something difierent 
out of that jDaper than those astounding 
'words she had heard read. Mr. Brown was 
an honest man, but he was an attorney; 
and Mrs. Christian was an honest w'oman, 
but she was next of kin. If she had 
known w’hat was in that cruel paper, she 
might not, perhaps, have preserved it so 
carefully. She read it over, treihbling, and 
not understanding the very words she mut- 
tered under her breath. Bessie read it also, 
over her shoulder. While they were so oc- 
cupied, Mr. Brown relieved his perplexed 
mind with a vehemence not much less tragi- 
cal than that of the disappointed heir. 

“I have known many absurd things in 


the way of wills,” said Mr. Brown, “ but 
this is the crown of all. Who on earth 
ever heard of Phoebe Thomson ? W^ho’s 
Phoebe Thomson? Her daughter? Why, 
she never had any daughter in the memory 
of man. I should say it is somewhere like 
thirty years since she settled down in Car- 
lingford — with no child, nor appearance of 
ever having had one — an old w’itch with 
three cats, and a heart like the nether mill- 
stone. Respect ? don’t speak to me ! why 
should I respect her? Hero she’s gone, 
after living a life w'hich nobody -w'as the 
better for ; certainly 1 was none the better 
for it ; wdry, she did not even employ me to 
make this precious will ; and saddled m e — 
me of all men in the world — w'ith a burden I 
W'ouldn’t undertake for my own brother. 
I’ll have nothing to do with it.' Do you 
suppose I’m going to give up my own busi- 
ness, and all my comfort, to seek Phoebe 
Thomson ? The idea’s ridiculous ! the wo- 
man w'as mad ! ” 

“ Hush ! for we’re in the house of our 
departed friend, and have just laid her 
down,” said the inappropriate rector, “ in 
the sure and certain hope — ” 

Mr. Brown made, and checked himself in 
making, an extraordinary grimace. “ Do 
you suppose I’m bound to go hunting Phoebe 
Thomson till that day comes ? ” said the at- 
torney. “Better to be a ghost at once, 
when one could have surer information. 
I’m very sorry, Mrs. Christian ; I have no 
hand in it, I assure you. Who do you im- 
agine this Phoebe Thomson is ? ” 

“ Sir,” said Mrs. Christian, “ I decline to 
give you any information. If my son was 
here, instead of being in India, as everybody 
knows, I might have some one to act for 
me. But you may be certain I shall take 
advice upon it. You will hear from my so- 
licitor, Mr. Brown; I decline to give you 
any information on the subject.” 

Mr. Brown stared broadly at the speaker; 
his face reddened. He w'atchcd her get up 
and make her way out of the room with a 
perplexed look, half angry, half eompassion- 
ate. She went out with a little of the pas- 
sionate and resentful air wdiich deprives 
such disappointments of th^ sympathy they 
deserve — wrathful, vindictive, consoling her- 
self with dreams that it was all a plot, and 
she could stiil^have her rights ; but a sad 
figure, notwithstanding her flutter of bitter 


THE EXECUTOR. 


rage — a sad figure to those who knew what 
home she was going to, and ho’w she had 
lived. Her very dress, so much better than 
it usually was, enhanced the melancholy as- 
pect of the poor woman’s withdrawal. Her 
daughter followed her closely, ashamed, and 
not venturing to lift her eyes. They were 
a pathetic couple to that little group that 
knew all about them. Nancy threw the 
room-door open for them, with a revengeful 
satisfaction. One of the funeral attendants 
who still lingered outside opened the outer 
one. They went out of the subdued light, 
into the day, their hearts tingling with a 
hundred w'ounds. At least the mother’s 
heart was pierced, and palpitating in every 
nerve. There was an instinctive silence 
v;hile they w^ent out, and after they were 
gone. Even Mr. Brown’s “ humph ! ” was a 
very subdued protest against the injustice 
which Mrs. Christian had done him. Every- 
body stood respectful of the real calamity. 

“ And so, there they are just where they 
were ! ” cried the young surgeon, who was 
one of the party ; “ and pretty sweet Bessie 
must still carry her father on her shoulders, 
and drag her mother by her sj,de wherever 
she goes ; it’s very hard — one can’t help 
thinking it’s a very hard burden for a girl 
of her years.” 

“ But it is a burden of which she might 
be relieved,” said Mr. Brown with a smile. 

The young man colored high and drew 
back a little. “Few men have courage 
enough to take up such loads^of their own 
will,” he said, with a little heat ; “ I have 
burdens of my own.” 

A few words mt^y imply a great deal in a 
little company, wh$re all the interlocutors 
know all about each other. This, though it 
was s^H^ple enough# disturbed the composure 
of, the young doctor. A minute after he 
i^utteifed something about his further pres- 
ence beifig unnecessary, and hastened away. 
There were now only left the rector, the 
churchwarden, and Mr. Brown. 

“ Of course you will accept her trust, Mr. 
Brown,” said the rector. 

The attorney made a great many grimaces, 
but said nothing. The whole matter was 
too startling and sudden to have left him 
time to think what he was to do. 

“Anyhow the poor Christians are left in 
the lurch,” said the churchwarden ; “ for, I 
suppose, Brown, if you don’t undertake it. 


5 

it’ll go into chancery. Oh! I don’t pre- 
tend to know ; but it’s natural to suppose, 
of course, that it would go into chancery, 
and stand empty with all the windows broken 
for twenty years. But couldn’t they make 
you undertake it whether you pleased or no ? 
I am only saying what occurs to me ; of 
course I’m not a lawyer — I can’t know.” * 

“ Well, never mind,” said Mr. Brown ; “I 
cannot undertake to say just at this identi- 
cal moment what I shall do. I don’t like 
the atmosphere of this place, and there’s 
nothing more to be done just now that 1 
know of. We had better go.” 

“ But the house — and Nancy — some con- 
clusion must be come to directly. What 
will you do about them ? ” said the rector. 

“ To be sure I I don’t doubt there’s plate 
and jewelry and such things about — they 
ought to be sealed and secured, and that 
sort of thing,” said the still more energetic 
lay functionary; “For any thing we know, 
she might have money in old stockings all 
about the house. I shouldn’t be surprised 
at any thing, after what we’ve heard to-day. 
Twenty thousand pounds ! and a daughter 1 
K any one had told me that old Mrs. Thom- 
son had either the one or the other yester- 
day at this time, I should have said they 
were crazy. Certainly, Brown, the cup- 
boards and desks and so forth should be 
examined and sealed up. It is your duty to 
Phoebe Thomson. You must do your duty 
to Phoebe Thomson, or she’ll get damages of 
you. I suppose so — rjou ought to know.” 

“ Confound Phoebe Thomson ! ” said the 
attorney, with gTeat unction j “but not- 
withstanding, come along, let us get out of 
this. As for her jewelry and her old stock- 
ings, they must take their chance. I can’t 
stand it any longer — pah ! there’s no air to 
breathe. How did the old witch ever man- 
age to live to eighty here ? ” 

“ You must not call her by such improper 
epithets. I have no doubt she was a good 
woman,” said the rector; “and recollect, 
really, you owe a little respect to a person 
who was only buried to-day.” 

“If she were to be buried to-morrow,’' 
cried the irreverent attorney, making his 
way first out of the narrow doorway, “I 
know one man who would have nothing to 
do with ‘the obsequies. Why, look here ! 
what right had that old humbug to saddle 
me with her duties, after neglecting them 


THE EXECUTOR. 


6 

all her life ; and, with that bribe implied, to 
lure me to undertake the job too. Ah, the 
old wretch ! don’t let us speak of her. As 
for respect, I don’t owe her a particle — that 
is a consolation. I knew something of the 
kind of creature she was before to-day.” 

So saying, John Brown thrust his hands 
into his pockets, shrugged up his shoulders, 
and went off at a startling pace ujd the quiet 
street. It was a very quiet street in the 
outskirts of a very quiet little town. The 
back of the house which they had just left 
was on a line with the road — a blank wall, 
broken only by one long staircase-window. 
The front was to the garden, entering by a 
little side-gate, through which the indig- 
nant executor had just hurried, crunching 
the gravel under his rapid steps. A line of 
such houses, doleful and monotonous, with 
all the living part of them concealed in their 
gardens, formed one side of the street along 
which he passed so rapidly. The other side 
consisted of humbler habitations, meekly 
contented to look at their neighbors’ back- 
windows. When John Brown had shot far 
ahead of his late companions, who followed 
together, greatly interested in this new sub- 
ject of talk, his rapid course was interrupted 
for a moment. Bessie Christian came run- 
ning across the street from one of the little 
houses. She had no bonnet on, and her 
black dress made her blonde complexion 
and light hair look clearer and fairer than 
ever ; and when the lawyer drew up all at 
once to hear what she had to say, partly 
from compassion, partly from curiosity, it 
did not fail to strike him how like a child 
she was, approaching him thus simply with 
her message. “ O Mr. Brown,” cried 
Bessie, out of breath, “ I want to speak to 
you. If you will ask Nancy, I am sure she 
can give you whatever information is to be 
had about — about aunt’s friends. She has 
been with aunt all her life. I thought I 
would tell you in case you might think, 
after what mamma said — ” 

“ I did not think any thing about it,” said 
Mr. Brown. 

“ That we knew something, and would 
not tell you ; but wo don’t know any thing,” 
said Bessie. “ I never heard of Phoebe 
Thomson before.” 

Mr. Brown shrugged up his shoulders 
higher than ever, and thrust his hands 
deeper into his pockets. “ Thank you,” he 


said, a little ungraciously. “ I should have 
spoken to Nancy, of course, in any case ; 
but I’m sure it’s very kind of you to take the 
trouble — good-by.” 

Bessie went back blushing and discon- 
certed ; and the rector and the churchwarden, 
coming gradually up on the other side of the 
road, seeing her eager approach and down- 
cast withdrawal, naturally wondered to each 
other what she could want with Brown, 
and exchanged condolences on the fact that 
Brown’s manners were wonderfully bearish 
— really too bad. Brown, in the mean time, 
without thinking any thing about his man-^ 
ners, hurried along to his office. Pie was 
extremely impatient of the whole concern ; 
it vexed him unconsciously to see Bessie 
Christian ; it even occurred to him that the 
sight of her and of her mother about would 
make his unwelcome office all the more 
galling to him. In addition to all the an- 
noyance and trouble, here would be a con- 
stant suggestion that he had wronged these 
people. He rushed into his private sanctu- 
ary the most uncomfortable man in Carling- 
ford. An honest, selfish, inoffensive citizen, 
injuring no,one, if perhaps he did not help 
so many as he might have done — what griev- 
ous fault had he committed to bring upon 
him such a misfortune as this ? 

The will which had caused so much con- 
versation was to this purport. It bequeathed 
all the property of which Mrs. Thomson of 
Grove Street died possessed, to John Brown, 
attorney in 0arlingford, in trust for Phoebe 
Thomson, the only child of the testatrix, who 
had not seen or heard of her .for thirty 
years ; and in case of all lawful means to 
find the said Phoebe Thomson proving un- 
successful, at the end of three years the 
property in question was bequeathed to John 
Brown, his heirs and administrators, abso- 
lutely and in full possession. No wonder it 
raised a ferment in the uncommunicative 
bosom of the Carlingford attorney, and kept 
the town in talk for more than nine days. 
Mrs. Thomson had died possessed of twenty 
thousand pounds : such an event had not 
happened at Carlingford in the memory of 
man. 

CHAPTER II. 

The divers emotions excited by this very 
unexpected occurrence may be better evi- 
I denced by the manner in which the evening 


THE EXECUTOR. 


of that day was spent in various houses in 
Carlingford than by any other means. 

First, in the little house of the Christians. 
It was a cottage on the other side of Grove 
Street — a homely little box of two stories, 
with a morsel of garden in front, and some 
vegetables behind. There, on that spring 
afternoon, matters did"* not look cheerful. 
The little sitting-room was deserted — the 
fire had died out— the hearth was unswept 
— the room in a litter. Bessie’s pupils had 
not come to-day. They had got holiday 
three days ago, in happy anticipation of be- 
ing dismissed forever ; and only their young 
teacher’s prudential remonstrances had pre- 
vented poor Mrs. Christian from making a 
little speech to them, and telling them all 
that henceforward Miss Christian would have 
other occupations, but would always be fond 
of them, and glad to see her little friends in 
their new house. To make that speech 
would have delighted Mrs. Christian’s heart. 
She had managed, however, to convey the 
meaning of it by many a fatal hint and allu- 
sion. In this work of self-destruction the 
poor woman had been only too successful ; 
for already the mothers of the little girls 
had begun to inquire into the terms and ca- 
pabilities of other teachers, and the founda- 
tions of Bessie’s little empire were shaken 
and tottering, though fortunately they did 
not know of it to-day. Every thing was 
very cold, dismal, and deserted in that little 
parlor. Faint sounds overhead were the 
only sounds audible in the house; some- 
times a foot moving over the creaky boards : 
now and then a groan. Up-stairs there were 
two rooms ; one a close, curtained, fire- 
ligiited, stifling, invalid’s room. There was 
Bessie sitting listlessly by a table, upon 
which were the familiar tea-things, which 
conveyed no comfort to-night; and there 
was her paralytic father sitting helpless, 
sometimes shaking his head, sometimes 
grumbling out faint, half-articulate words, 
sighs, and exclamations. “ Dear, dear ! ah ! 
well ! that’s what it has come to ! ” said the 
sick man, hushed by long habit into a sort 
of spectatorship, and feeling even so great 
d disappointment rather by. way of sympathy 
dian personal emotion. Bessie sat listless by, 
reeling a vague exasperation at this languid 
running accompaniment to her thoughts. 
The future had been blotted out suddenly, 
and at a blow, from Bessie’s eyes. She 


7 

could see nothing before her — nothing but 
this dark, monotonous, aching present mo- 
ment, pervaded by the dropping sounds of 
that faint, half-articulate voice. Other scene 
was not to dawn upon her youth. It was 
hard for poor Bessie. She sat silent in the 
stifling room, with the bed and its hangings 
between her and the window, and the fire 
scorching her cheek. She could neither cry, 
nor scold, nor blame anybody. None of the 
resources of despair were possible to her. 
She knew it would have to go on again all 
the same, and that now things never would 
be any better. She could not run away from 
the prospect before her. It was not so much 
the continuance of poverty, of labor, of all 
the dreadful pinches of thrift ; it was the end 
of possibility — the knowledge that now there 
was no longer any thing to expect. 

On the other side of the passage Bessie’s 
own sleeping-room was inhabited by a rest- 
less fever of disappointment and despair and 
hope. There was Mrs. Christian lying on 
her daughter’s bed. The poor woman was 
half-crazed with the whirl of passion in her 
brain. That intolerable sense of having been 
duped and deceived, of actually having a 
hand in the overthrow of all her own hopes, 
aggravated her natural disappointment into 
frenzy. When she recollected her state of 
exultation that morning, her confident inten- 
tions — when they were to remove, what 
changes were to be in their manner of life, 
even what house they were to occupy — it is 
not wonderful if the veins swelled in her 
poor head, and all her pulses throbbed with 
the misery of the contrast. But with all this 
there mingled a vindictive personal feeling 
still more exciting. Nancy, whom she knew 
more of than any one else did — her close, 
secret, unwavering enemy ; and even the in- 
nocent lawyer, whom, in her present condi- 
tion of mind, she could not believe not to 
have known of this dreadful cheat practised 
upon her, or not to care for that prize which, 
now that it was lost, seemed to her worth 
every thing that was precious in life. The 
poor creature lay goading herself into mad- 
ness with thoughts of how she would be re- 
venged upon these enemies ; how she would 
watch, and track out, and reveal their 
hidden plots against her ; how she would 
triumph over and crush them. All these 
half-frenzied cogitations were secretly per- 
vaded — a still more maddening exasperation 


THE EXECUTOR. 


8 

— ^by a consciousness of her own impotence. 
The evening came creeping in, growing dark 
around her— silence fell over the little house, 
where nobody moved or spoke, and where 
all the world, the heavens, and the earth, 
seemed changed since this morning; but 
the wonder was how that silence could con- 
tain her, — all palpitating with pangs and 
plans, a bleeding, infuriated, wounded crea- 
ture— and show no sign of the frenzy it cov- 
ered. She had lain down to rest, as the 
saying is. How many women are there who 
go thus to a voluntary crucifixion and tor- 
ture by lying down to rest ! Mrs. Christian 
lay with her dry eyes blazing through the 
darkness, no more able to sleep than she was 
to do all that her burning fancy described 
to her. She was a hot-blooded Celtic wo- 
man, of that primitive island which has pre- 
served her name. If she could have sought 
sympathy, here was nobody to bestow it. 
Not the heart which that poor ghost of man- 
hood in the next room had lost out of his 
chilledj bewildered bosom ; not Bessie’s 
steadfast, unexcited spirit. The poor soul 
saved herself from going wild by thinking of 
her boy ; holding out her passionate arms to 
him thousands of miles away ; setting him 
forth as the deliverer, with all the absolute 
folly of love and passion. He would come 
home and have justice done to his mother. 
Never fancy was more madly unreasonable ; 
but it saved her from some of the efiTects of 
the agitation in her heart. 


On the other side of the road, at the same 
hour, Nancy prepared her tea in the house 
of which she was temporary mistress. There 
could not be any doubt, to look at her now, 
that this tall, dry, withered figure, and face 
full of characteristic wrinkles, was like Mrs. 
Christian. The resemblance had been no- 
ticed by many. And as old Mrs. Thomson 
had not hesitated to avow that her faithful 
servant was connected with her by some 
distant bond of relationship, it was not dif- 
ficult to imagine that these two were really 
related, though both denied it strenuously. 
Nancy had a friend with her to tea. They 
were in the cheerful kitchen, which had a 
window to the garden, and a window in the 
side wall of the house, by which a glimpse 
of the street might be obtained through the 
garden-gate. The firelight shone pleasantly 
through the cheerful apartment. All the 


peculiar ornaments of a kitchen — the cov- 
ers, the crockery, the polished sparkles of 
shining pewter and brass — adorned the K 
walls. Through it all went Nancy in her * 
new black dress and ample snowy-M'hite 


apron. She carried her head high, and 


moved with a certain rhythmical elation. It 
is surely an unphilosophical conclusion that 
there is no real enjoyment in wickedness. 
Nancy had no uneasiness in her triumph. 
The more she realized what her victory 
must have cost her opponent, the more en- 
tire grew her satisfaction. Hemorse might 
have mixed with her exultation had she had 
any pity in her ; but she had not ; and, in 
consequence, it was with unalloyed pleasure 
that she contemplated the overthrow of her 
adversary. Perhaps the very satisfaction ol 
a good man in a good action is inferior to 
the absolute satisfaction with which, by 
times, a bad man is permitted to contem- 
plate the issue of his wickedness. Nancy 
marched about her kitchen, preparing her 
tea with an enjoyment which possibly would 
not have attended a benevolent exercise of 
her powers. Possibly she could almost have 
painted to herself, line by line, the dark 
tableau of that twilight room where Mrs. 
Christian lay, driving herself crazy with wild 
thoughts. She did the gloom of the picture 
full justice. If she could have peeped into 
the window and seen it with her own eyes, 
she would have enjoyed the sight. 

“Pll make Mr. Brown keep me in the 
house,” said Nancy, sitting down at a table 
piled with good things, and which looked an 
embodiment of kitchen luxury and comfort, 
“and get me a girl. It was what missis 
always meant to do. I’ll show it to him 
out of the will that .1 W'as left in trust to be 
made commforable. .And in course of nature 
her things all comes to me. It’s a deal 
easier to deal with a single gentleman than 
if there was a lady poking her nose about 
into every thing. Thank my stars, upstarts 
such like as them Christians shall never 
lord it over me ; and now I have more of 
my own way. I’ll be glad to see you of an 
evening whenever you can commforabl(?. 
Bring a bit of work, and we’ll have a quiet 
chat. I consider myself settled for life.” 


The young surgeon’s house was at the 
other end of the town; it was close to a 
region of half-built streets— for Caiiingford 


THE EXECUTOR. 


was a prosperous town — where successive 
colonies were settling, where houses were 
damp and drainage incomplete, and a good 
practice to be had with pains. The house 
had a genteel front to the road, a lamp over 
the door, and a little surgery round the 
corner, where it gave forth the sheen of its 
red and blue bottles across a whole half- 
finished district. Mr. Rider had come home 
tired, unaccountably tired. He had kicked 
off one boot, and taken a cigar from his 
case, and forgotten to light it. He sat 
plunged in his easy-chair in a drear brown 
study — a brown study inaccessible to the 
solaces which generally make such states of 
mind endurable. His cigar went astray 
among the confused properties of his writ- 
ing-table ; the book he had been reading 
last night lay rejected in the farthest corner 
of the room. He was insensible to the 
charms of dressing-gown and slippers. On 
the whole, he was in a very melancholy, 
sullen, not to say savage mood. He sat and 
gazed fiercely into the fire, chewing the cud 
of fancies, in which very little of the sweet 
seemed to mingle with the bitter. He had 
been the medical attendant of Mrs. Thom- 
son of Grove Street, and had assisted this 
afternoon at her funeral, and you might 
have supposed he had hastened the advent 
of that melancholy day, had you seen his 
face. 

On the whole, it was a hard dilemma in 
w^hich the poor young man found himself. 
He, too, like Nancy, kept realizing the in- 
terior of that other little house in Grove 
Street. Both of .them, by dint of that ac- 
quaintance with their neighbors which every 
body has in a small community, came to a 
moderately correct guess at what was going 
on there. Young Mr. Rider sat in heavy 
thought, Sometimes bursting out into vio- 
lent gestures which fortunately nobody wit- 
ifessed ; sometimes uttering sighs which all 
! but blew out his lights — impatient, urgent 
: sighs, not of melancholy, but of anger and 
I resistance — the sighs of a young man who 
1 found circumstances intolerable, and yet 
j w^as obliged to confess, with sore mortifica- 
j tion and humbling, that he could not mend 
i them, and behoved to endure. The visions 
i that kept gliding across his eyes drove him 
i half as wild as poor Mrs. Christian : one 
I moment a pretty young wife, all the new 
I house wanted to make it fully tenable ; but 


9 

he had scarcely brought her across the 
threshold when a ghastly figure in a chair 
was carried over it after her, up-stairs into 
the bridal apartments, and another woman, 
soured and drawn awry by pressure of 
poverty, constitutionally shabby, vehement, 
and high-tempered, pervaded the new habita- 
tion. No use saying pshaw ! and pah ! — 
no use swearing bigger oaths, — no use 
pitching unoffending books into the corners, 
or breathing out those short, deep breaths 
of desperation. This was in reality the 
state of affairs. Midnight did not change 
the aspect it had worn in the morning. 
Pondering all the night through would bring 
no light on the subject. Nothing could 
change those intolerable circumstances. The 
poor young surgeon threw his coat off in 
the heat and urgency of his thoughts, and 
pitched it from him like the books. There 
was no comfort or solace to be found in all 
that world of fancy. Only this morning 
sweeter dreams had filled this disordered 
apartment. In imagination, ho had helped 
his Bessie to minister to the comfort of the 
poor old sick parents in Mrs. Thomson’s 
house. Now he knitted his brows desper- 
ately over it, but could find no outlet. Un- 
less some good fairy sent him a patient in 
the middle of the night, the chances were 
that the morning would find him pursuing 
that same interminable brown study of 
which nothing could come. 

Mr.~BfOwn’s house was an old house in 
the middle of the town. The offices were in 
the lower floor, occupying one side of the 
building. On the other side of the wide, old- 
fashioned hall was his dining-room. There 
he sat all. by hiniself upon this agitating 
night. It was a large, lofty, barely fur- 
nished room, with wainscoted walls, and cu- 
rious stiff panelling, and a high mantle-shelf 
which he, though a tall man, could scarcely 
reach with his arm. It was dimly lighted, 
as well as barely furnished — altogether an 
inhuman, desert place — the poorest though 
the grandest of all w^e have yet looked into 
in Carlingford. Mr. Brown was not sensi- 
ble of its inhospitable aspect ; he was used 
to it, and that was enough. It occurred to 
him as little to criticise his house as to criti- 
cise his manners. Thus they were, and thus 
they would continue ; at least he had always 
believed so till to-night. 


THE EXECUTOR. 


10 

He sat in his easy-chair with his feet on 
\the fender, and a little table at his elbow 
’with his wine. As long as their was any 
thing in his glass he sipped it by habit, with- 
out being aware of what he was doing ; but 
when the glass was empty, though he had 
two or three times raised it empty to his 
lips, he was too much absorbed in his 
thoughts to replenish it. He was not by 
any means a handsome man ; and he was 
fire-and-forty or thereabouts, and had a 
habit of making portentous faces, when any 
way specially engaged in thought ; so that, 
on.?the whole, it was not a highly attractive 
or interesting figure which reclined back in 
the crimson chair, and stretched its slippered 
feet to the fire, sole inmate of the dim, spa- 
cious, vacant room. He was thinking over 
his new position with profound disgust and 
perplexity. Nevertheless, it cannot be de- 
nied that the subject lured him on, and drew 
out into stretches of imagination far beyond 
his wont ; — hunting all the world over after 
Phoebe Thomson ! But, after all, that was 
only a preliminary step; he was required 
only to use reasonable means, and for three 
years. If she turned up, there was an end 
of it; if she did not turn up — hero Mr. 
Brown sprang up hurriedly and assumed the 
favorite position of Englishmen in front of 
his fire. There, all glittering in the distance, 
rose up, solid and splendid, an appearance 
which few men could see without emotion — 
twenty thousand pounds ! It was not life 
and death to him, as it was to poor Mrs. 
Christian.’ It did not make all the difierence 
between sordid want and comfortable exist- 
ence ; but you may well believe it did not 
appear before the lawyer’s eyes without mov- 
ing him into a considerable degree of excite- 
ment. Such a fairy apparition had never 
appeared before in that cold, spacious, unin- 
habited room. Involuntarily to himself, Mr. 
Brown saw his house expand, his life open 
out, his condition change. Roseate lights 
dropped into the warming atmosphere whi«h 
had received that vision; the fairy wand 
waved through the dim air before him in 
spite of all his sobriety. The wiles of the 
enchantress lured J ohn Brown as effectually 
as if he had not been five-and-forty, an old 
bachelor, and an attorney ; and, after half 
an hour of these slowly growing, half-con- 
scious, half-resisted thoughts, any chance 
that had brought the name of the dead wo- 


man’s lost daughter to his memory, w’ould 
have called forth a very different “ confound 
Phoebe Thomson ! ” from that which burst 
from his troubled lips in the house in Grove 
Street. Possibly it was some such feel- 
ing which roused him up a moment after, 
w'hen the great cat came softly purring to 
his feet and rubbed against his slippers. 
Mr. Brown started violently, thrust puss 
away, flung himself back into his chair, 
grew very red, and murmured something 
about “ an ass ! ” ashamed to detect himself 
in his own vain imaginations. But that sud- 
den waking up did not last. After he had 
filled his glass and emptied it — after he had 
stirred his fire, and made a little noise, with 
some vague idea of dispelling the spell he 
was under — the fairy returned and retook 
possession under a less agreeable aspect. 
Suppose he were to be enriched, what was to 
become of the poor Christians ? They were 
not very near relations, and the old w'oman 
had a right to leave her money where she 
liked. Still there was a human heart in 
John Brown’s bosom. Somehow that little 
episode in the street returned to his recol- 
lection— Bessie running across, light and 
noiseless, with her message. How young 
the creature must be, after all, to have so 
much to do. Poor little Bessie ! she had 
not only lost her chance of being a great 
fortune, and one of the genteel young ladies 
of Carlingford, but she had lost her chance 
of the doctor, and his new house and rising 
practice. Shabby fellow ! to leave the pretty 
girl he was fond of, because she was a good 
girl, and was every thing to her old father 
and^other. I wonder will they say that’s 
my fault too ? ” said J ohn Brown to him self ; 
and stumbled up to his feet again on the 
stimulus of that thought, with a kind of * 
sheepish not unpleasant embarras^ent, and | 
a foolish half-smile upon his face. Some- f 
how at that moment, looking before him, as j 
he had done so many hundred times stand- ii 
ing .on his own hearthrug, it occurred to him 
all at once what a bare room this was that 
he spent his evenings in— what an inhuman, 
chilly, penurious pkce ! scarcely more home- ' 
like than that bit of open street, across which 
Bessie came tripping this afternoon, wanting 
to speak to him. Nobody wanted to speak 
to him here. No wonder he had a threaten- 
ing of rheumatism last winter. What a 
cold, wretched barn of a room ! He could 


THE EXECUTOR. 


not help wondering to himself whether the 
drawing-room were any better. In the new 
start his long-dormant imagination had 
taken, John Brown actually shivered in the 
moral coldness of his spacious, lonely apart- 
ment. In his mind he dare said that the 
•Christians looked a great deal more comfort- 
able in that little box of theirs, with that 
poor little girT working, and teaching, and 
keeping all straight. What a fool that young 
doctor was ! w'hat if he did work a little 
harder to make the old people an allowance ? 
However, it was no business of his. With 
a sigh of general discontent Mr. Brown 
pulled his bell violently, and had the fire 
made up, and asked for his tea. His tea ! 
he never touched it when it came, but sat 
pshawing and humphing at it, making him- 
self indignant over that fool of a young doc- 
tor. And what if these poor people, sour and 
sore after their misfortune, should think that 
this too was his fault ? 

CELiPTER III. 

Next morning Mr. Brown, with his hands 
in his pockets and his shoulders up to his 
ears as usual, went down at his ordinary 
rapid pace to old Mrs. Thomson’s house. 
Nancy had locked the house-door, which, like 
an innocent almost rural door as it^as, 
opened from without. She was up-stairs, 
very busy in a most congenial occupation — 
turning out the old lady’s wardrobe, and in- 
vestigating the old stores of lace and fur and 
jewelry. She knew them pretty well by 
heart before ; but now that, according to her 
idea, they were her own, every thing natu- 
rally acquired a new value. She had laid 
them out in little heaps, each by itself, on 
the dressing-table ; a faintly glittering row 
of old rings and brooches, most of them en- 
tirely valiSless, though Nancy was not aware 
of that. On the bed— the bed where two 
days ago that poor old pallid figure still lay 
in solemn ownership of the “property” 
around it — Nancy had spread forth her mis- 
tress’ ancient boas and vast muffs, half a 
century old ; most of them were absolutely 
dropping to pieces ; but as long as they held 
together with any sort of integrity, Nancy 

i was not the woman to lessen the number of 
her possessions. The bits of lace were laid 
»out upon the old sofa, each at full length. 
With these delightful accumulations all 
round her, Nancy was happy. She had en- 


11 

tered, as she supposed, upon an easier and 
more important life. Mistress of the empty 
house and all its contents, she carried her- 
self with an air of elation and independence 
which she had never ventured to display be- 
fore. No doubt had ever crossed her mind 
on the subj ect. She had taken it for^ granted 
that the expulsion of the Christians meant 
only her own triumph. She had even taken 
credit, both to herself and other people, for 
greater guiltiness than she really had in- 
curred. The will was not her doing, though 
Mrs. Christian said so and Nancy was willing 
to believe as much ; but she was glad to be 
identified as the cause of it, and glad to feel 
that she was the person who would enjoy the 
benefit. She was in this holiday state of 
mind, enjoying herself among her supposed 
treasures, when she was interrupted by the 
repeated and imperative demands for en-- 
trance made by Mr. Brown at the locked 
door. 

Nancy went down to open it, but not in 
too great a hurry. She was rather disposed 
to patronize the attorney. She put on her 
white apron, and went to the door spreading 
it down with a leisurely hand. To Nancy’s 
surprise and amazement, Mr. Brown plunged 
in without taking any notice of her. He 
went into the parlor, looked all round, then 
went up-stairs, three steps at a time, into 
the best parlor, uncomfortably near the scene 
of Nancy’s operations. There was the old 
cabinet for which he had been looking. When 
he saw it he called to her to look here. 
Nanc}% who had followed him close, came 
forward immediately. He was shaking the 
door of the cabinet to see if it was locked. 
It was a proceeding of which Nancy did not 
approve. 

“ I suppose this is where she kept her pa- 
pers,” said Mr. Brown ; “ get me the keys. 
I want to see what’s to be found among her 
papers touching this daughter of hers. You 
had better bring me all the keys. Make 
haste, for I have not any time to lose.” ^ 

“ Missis never kept any papers there,” 
said Nancy, alarmed and a little anxious. 
“ There’s the best china tea-set and the sil- 
ver service — that’s all you’ll find there.” 

“ Bring me the keys, however,” said Mr. 
Brown. “ Where did she keep her papers, 
eh.P You know all about her, I suppose. 
Do you know any thing about Phoebe Thom- 
son, that I’ve got to hunt up ? She was 


12 THE EXECUTOR. 


Mrs. Thomson’s (laughter, 1 understand. 
What caused her to leave her mother ? I 
suppose you know. What is she ? How 
much can you tell me about her ? ” 

“ As much as anybody living,” said Nancy, 
too well pleased to divert him from his in- 
quiries ^ftcr the keys. ‘ ‘ I was but a girl 
when it\appened j but I remember it like 
yesterday. She went off — missis never liked 
to have it mentioned,” said Nancy, coming 
to a dead stop. 

“ Go on,” cried Mr. Brown ; “ she can’t 
hear you now, can she ? Go on.” 

“ She went off with a soldier — that’s the 
truth. They were married after ; but missis 
never thought that mattered. He was a 
common man, and as plain a looking fellow 
as you’d see anywhere. Missis cast her off, 
and would have nothing to say to her. She 
over-persuaded me, and I let her in one 
night ; but missis wouldn’t look at her. 
She never came back. She was hurt in her 
feelin’s. We never heard of her more.” 

“ Nor asked after her, I suppose ? ” said 
the lawyer, indignantly. “Do you mean 
the old wretch never made any inquiry about 
her own child ? ” .. 

“ Meaning miss*}^ ? ” said Nancy. “ No 
— I don’t know as she ever did. She said 
she’d disown her j and she was a woman as 
always kept her word.” • 

“ Old beast ! ” said John Brown between 
his teeth ; “ but, look here ; if she’s mar- 
ried, she is not Phoebe Thomson. What’s 
her name ? ” 

“ I can’t tell,” said Nancy, lopking a lit- 
tle frightened. “ Sure, neither she is — to 
think of us never remarking that ! But 
dear, dear ! will that make any difference to 
the will ? ” 

Mr. Brown smiled grimly, but made no 
answer. “ Have you got any thing else to 
tell me about her ? Did she ever write to 
her mother V Do you know what regiment 
it is, or where it was at that time ? ” said 
the attorney. “ Think what you are about, 
and tell me clearly — what year was she 
married, and where were you at the time ? ” 

Nancy grew nervous under this close ques- 
tioning. She lost her self-possession and 
all her fancied importance. “ We were in 
the Isle o’ Man, where the Christians come 
from. I was born there myself. Missis’ 
friends was mostly there. It was by her 


husband’s side she belonged to Carlingford- 
It was about a two miles out of Douglas — 
a kind of a farmhouse. It was the year — 
the year — I was fifteen,” said Nancy, falter- 
ing. 

“ And how old are you now ? ” said the 
inexorable questioner, who had taken out* 
his memorandum-book. 

Nancy dropped into a chair and began to 
sob. “ It’s hard on a person bringing things 
back,” said Nancy, — “ and to think if she 
should actually turn up again just as she 
was ! As for living in the house with her, I 
couldn’t think of such a thing. Sally Chris- 
tian, or some poor-spirited person might do 
it, but not me as am used to be my own 
mistress,” cried Nancy, with increasing ag- 
itation. “ She had the temper of — oh ! she 
was her mother’s temper. Dear, dear! to 
think as she might be alive, and come back 
to put all wrong I It was in the year ’eight 
— that’s the year it was.” 

“ Then you didn’t think she would come 
back,” said Mr. Brown. 

“ It’s a matter o’ five-and-thirty years ; ; 
and not knowing even her name, nor the ■ 
number of the regiment, nor nothing — as I 
don’t,” said Nancy, cautiously; “ and never 
hearing nothing about her, what was a per- 
soiii^o think ? And if it’s just Phoebe Thom- 
son you’re inquiring after, and don’t say 
nothing about the marriage nor the regi- 
ment, you may seek long enough before you ' 
find her,” said Nancy, with a glance of what . 
was intended to be private intelligence be- : 
tween herself and her questioner, “ and all - 
correct to the will.” | 

Mr. Brown put up his memorandum-book I 
sharply in his pocket. “ Bring me the keys. I 
Look here, bring me all the keys,” he said, j 
“ What’s in this other room, eh ? It was. 'j 
her bedroom, I suppose. Hollo,‘ what’s all j 
this?” * ; 

For all Nancy’s precautions had not been 
able to ward off this catastrophe. He pushed ^ 
into the room she had left to admit him, 
where all her treasures were exhibited. His 
quick eye glanced round in an instant, and 
understood it. Trembling as Nancy was 
with new alarms, she had still strength to 
make one struggle. i 

“ IVIissis’ things fall to me,” said Nancy, 
half in assertion, half in entreaty ; “ that’s 
how it always is ; the servant gets the lady’s 


1 


THE EXECUTOR. 13 


wardrobe--*tlie servant as has nursed her and 
done for her, when there’s no daughter — 
that’s always understood.” 

Bring me the keys,” said Mr. Brown. 

The Is^ys were in the open wardrobe, a 
heavy hunch. John Brown seized hold of 
the furs on the bed and begah to toss them 
into the wardrobe. Some of them dropped 
in pieces in his hands and w^ere tossed out 
again. He took no notice of the lace or the 
trinkets, but swiftly locked every keyhole 
he could find in the room — drawers, boxes, 
cupboards, every thing. Nancy looked on 
with fierce exclamations. She w'ould have 
her rights — she was not to be put upon. 
She w’ould have the law of him. She would 
let everybody know how he was taking upon 
himself as if he were the master of the house. 

“ And so I am, my good woman ; when 
will you be ready to leave it ? ” said Mr. 
Brown. “ You shall have due time to get 
ready, and I wont refuse you the trumpery 
you’ve set your heart upon. Judging from 
the specimen, it wont do Phoebe Thomson 
much good. But not in this sort of w^ay, 
you know. I must put a stop to this. Now 
let me hear what’s the earliest day you can- 
leave the house.” 

“ I’m not going to leave the house ! ” cried' 
Nancy; “I’ve lived here thirty years, #tnd 
here I’ll die. Missis’ meaning was to leave 
me in the house, and make me comraforable 
for life. Many’s the time she’s said so. Do 
you think you’re going to order me about just 
as you please ? What do you suppose she left 
the property like that for but to spite the 
Christians, and to leave a good home to 
me? ” 

“ When will you be ready to leave ? ” re- 
peated Mr. Brown, without paying the least 
attention to her outcries and excitement. 

“ I tell you I’m not agoing to leave ! ” 
screamed Nancy. “To leave!— — no, 
not for all the upstarts in Carlingford, if they 
was doubled and tripled. My missis meant 
me to stay here commforable all my days. 
She meant me to have a girl and make my- 
self commforable. Many and many’s the 
time she’s said so.” 

“But she did not say so in the will,” said 
the inexorable executor ; “ and so out you 
must go, and that very shortly. Now don’t 
say any thing. It is no use fighting with 
me. You’ll be well treated if you leave di- 
rectly and quietly ; otherwise, you shan’t have 


any thing. The other keys, please. Now 
mind w'hat I say. You’re quite able to make 
a noise and a disturbance, but you’re not 
able to resist me. You shall^have time to 
make your preparations and look out another 
home for yourself ; but take care you don’t 
compel me to use severe measures-j-that’s 
enough.” 

“But I wont ! — not if you drag me over 
the stones. I wont go. I’ll speak to Mr. 
Curtis,” cried the unfortunate Nancy. 

“ Pshaw ! ” -said John Brown. Mr. Curtis 
was the other attorney in Carlingford, the 
one whom probably Mrs. Christian had in 
her mind when she threatened him with her 
solicitor. He laughed to himself angrily as 
he went down-stairs. If he was to under- 
take this troublesome business, at least he 
was not going to be hampered by a parcel 
of furious women. When he had locked up 
every thing and was leaving the house, 
Nancy threw open an upper window and 
threw a malediction after him. “You’ll never 
find her ! It’ll go back to them as it belongs 
to,” shouted, Nancy. He smiled to himself 
again as he turned away. Was it possible 
that John Brown began, to think it might bo 
as well if he never did find her? The 
prophecy certainly was not unpleasant to 
him, though poor Nancy meant it otherwise. 
Mr. Brown hurried up the monotonous side 
of Grove Street, we are afraid not without 
a little private exhilaration in the thought 
that Phoebe Thomson was not unlike the 
proverbial needle in the bundle of hay. The 
chances w'ere she was dead years ago ; and 
though he would neither lose a minute in 
beginning, nor leave any means unused in 
pursuing the search for her, it was certain 
he would not be inconsolable if he never 
heard any more of Phoebe Thomson. Doubt- 
less he would not have acknowledged as 
much in words, and did not even have any 
express confidences with himself on the sub- 
ject, lest his own mind might have been 
shocked by the disclosure of its involuntary 
sentiment. Still he took an interest in Mrs. 
Thomson’s bequest, greater than he took in 
the properties intrusted to him by his other 
clients. He could not help himself. He 
felt affectionately interested in that twenty 
thousand pounds. 

But as he came up to it, John Brown re- 
membered, with a little interest, that spot 
of the quiet street where Bessie, yesterday, 


THE EXECUTOR. 


14 

ran across to speak to him. He could not 
help recalling her appearance as she ap- 
proached him, though young girls were 
greatly out of^his way. Poor Bessie ! The 
baker’s cart occupied at that moment the 
spot which Bessie had crossed ; and one of 
the Carlingford ladies was leaving the door 
of the Christians’ little house. Mr. Brown, 
though no man was less given to colloquies 
with his acquaintances in the street, crossed 
over to speak to her. He could not help 
being interested in every thing about that 
melancholy little house, nor feeling that the 
very sight of it was a reproach to his 
thoughts. Poor Bessie ! there she stood 
yesterday in her black frock — the light- 
footed, soft-voiced creature — not much more 
than a child beside the middle-aged old 
bachelor who could find it in his heart to 
be harsh to her. Across that very spot he 
passed hastily with many compunctions in 
the mind which had been roused so much 
out of its usual w^ays of thinking by the 
events and cogitations of the last four-and- 
twenty hours. The lady to whom he paid 
such a marked token of respect was quite 
flattered and excited to meet him. He was 
the hero of the day at Carlingford. The 
last account of this extraordinary affair was 
doubtless to be had from himself. 

You’ve been at the Christians’. I sup- 
pose you were there for some purpose so 
early in the morning,” said the abrupt Mr. 
Brown, after the necessary salutations were 
over. 

“ Yes — but I am a very early person,” said 
the lady. “ Oh, forgive me. I know quite 
well you don’t care to hear what sort of a 
person I am ; but really, Mr. Brown, now 
that you are quite the hero of the moment 
yourself, do let me congratulate you. They 
say there is not a chance of finding this 
Phoebe Thomson. Some people even say 
she is a myth and never existed ; and that 
it was only a device of the old lady to give 
her an excuse for leaving you the money. 
Dear me ! did you ask me a question ? I 
forget. I am really so interested to see you.” 

“ I like an answer when it’s practicable,” 
said the lawyer. “I said I supposed you 
were about some business at Miss Christian’s 
house ? ” 

“ I must answer you this time, mustn’t I, 
or you wont talk to me any longer ? ” said 
the playful interlocutor, whom John Brown 


could have addressed in terms other than 
complimentary. ‘‘ Yes, poor thing, Pve been 
at Miss Christian’s, and on a disagreeable 
business too, in the present circumstances. 
We are going to send our Mary a^yay to a 
finishing-school. So I had to tell poor Bes- 
sie we shouldrt’t want any more music-les- 
sons after this quarter. I was very sorry, I 
am sure — and there was Mrs. Mayor taking 
her little girls away from the morning-class. 
When they expected to get Mrs. Thom- 
son’s money they had been a little careless, 

I suppose ; and to give three days’ holiday 
in the middle of the quarter, without any j 
reason for it but an old person’s death, you 
know — a death out of the house — is trying , 
to people’s feelings; and Mrs. Christian i 
had given everybody to understand that her , 
daughter would soon have no occasion for 
teaching. People don’t like these sort of 
things ; and Mrs. Mayor heard of somebody ' 
else a little nearer, who is said to be very ' 
good at bringing on little children. I said ;j 
all I could to induce her to change her mind ; ![ 
but I believe they’re to leave next quarter. I 
Poor Bessie ! I am very sorry for her, I am | 
■sure.” I 

“And this is how you ladies comfort a j 
'good young woman when she meets with a j 
great disappointment ? ” said John Brown. 

“La! — a disappointment#! You know ^ 
that only means one thing to a girl,” said | 
the lady, “but you’re always so severe. I 
Bessie has had no disappointment, as peo- ;l 
pie understand the word ; yet there’s young J 
Dr. Rider, you know, very attentive, and I 6 
do hope he’ll propose directly, and set it all 5 
right for her, poor thing, for she’s a dear f 
good girl. But to hear you speak so — of all fj 
people— Mr. Brown. Why, isn’t it your ' 
fault ? I declare I would hate you if I were 
Bessie Christian. If the doctor were to' be . j 
off too, and she really had a disappointment, 
it would be dreadfully hard upon her, poor ,! ' 
girl ; but it’s to be hoped things will turn * 
out better than that. Good-morning ! but ■! \ 
you have not told me a word about your V 
own story — all Carlingford is full of it. fj 
People say you are the luckiest man ! ” ,| 

These words overtook, rather than were 
addressed to, him as he hurried off indig- I 
nant. JoHn Brown was not supposed to be ? 
an observant person, but somehow he saw i 
the genteel people of Carlingford about the | 
streets that day in a surprisingly distinct I 


THE EXECUTOR. 


15 


manner — saw them eager to get a little oc- 
cupation for themselves anyhow — saw them 
coming out for their walks, and their shop- 
ping, and their visits, persuading themselves 
by such means that they were busy people, 
virtuously employed, and making use of 
their life. What was Bessie doing? Mr. 
Brown thought he would like to see her, 
and that he would not like to see her. It 
was painful to think of being anyhow con- 
nected with . an arrangement which con- 
demned to that continued labor such a 
young soft creature — a creature so like, 
and yet so unlike, those other smiling young 
women who were enjoying their youth. And 
just because it was painful Mr. Brown could 
not take his thoughts off that subject. If 
Phoebe Thomson turned up he should cer- 
tainly try to induce her to do something for 
the relations whom her mother had disap- 
pointed so cruelly. If Phoebe Thomson did 
not turn up — ^well, what then? — if she didn’t? 
Mr. Brown could not tell : it would be his 
duty to do something. But, in the mean 
time, he did nothing except shake his fist 
at young Rider’s drag as it whirled the doc- 
tor past tp his patients, and repeat the 
“ shabby fellow ! ” of last night with an air 
of disgust. John Brown had become very 
popular just at that moment ; all his friends 
invited him to dinner, and dropped in to 
hear about this story which had electrified 
Caiiingford. And all over the town the un- 
known entity called Phoebe Thomson was 
discussed in every possible kind of hypoth- 
esis, and assumed a different character in 
the hands of every knot of gossips. No- 
body thought of Bessie Christian ; but more 
and more as nobody thought of her, that 
light little figure running across the quiet 
street, and wanting to speak to him, im- 
pressed itself like a picture upon the reten- 
tive hut not very fertile imagination of Mrs. 
Thomson’s executor. It troubled, and vexed, 
and irritated, and unsettled him. One little 
pair of willing hands ; one little active cheer- 
ful soul ; and all the burden of labor, and 
patience, and dread monotony of life that 
God had allotted to that pretty creature ; 
how it could be, and nobody step in to pre- 
vent it, was a standing marvel to John 
Brown. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Mr. Brown was well known everywhere 
as a famous business man — not perhaps in 
that sense so familiar to modern observers, 
which implies the wildest flights of specula- 
tion, and such skilful arts of bookmaking as 
ruin themselves by their very cleverness. 
Mr. Brown did not allow the grass to grow 
below his feet ; his advertisements perpetu- 
ally led off that list of advertisements in the 
Times which convey so many skeleton ro- 
mances to a curious public. All over the 
country, people began to entertain guesses 
about that Phoebe Thomson who was to hear 
something so much to her own advantage ; 
and Phoebe Thomsons answered to the call 
through all the breadth of the three king- 
doms. Mr. Brown had a detective officer 
in his pay for the whole year. He -made 
joftrneys himself, and sent this secret agent 
on innumerable journeys. He discovered 
the regiment, a detachment of which had 
been stationed at the Isle of Man during the 
year 1808 ; he went to the island ; he left 
no means untried of finding out this hypo- 
thetical person. Nearer at home, Mr. Brown 
had made short work of Nancy, v/ho, too 
deeply mortified by the failure of her hopes 
to remain in Caiiingford, had returned to 
her native place with a moderate pension, 
her own savings, and her mistress’ Uld 
clothes, not so badly satisfied on the whole, 
but still a defeated woman. While poor 
Mrs. Christian, compelled by sore dint of 
time and trouble to give up her forlorn 
hope of getting justice done her, and re- 
claiming the wealth that had been so nearly 
hers from the hands of Mr. Brown, w^as half 
reconciled to him by his summary dealings 
with her special enemy. A whole year had 
passed, and other things had happened at 
Caiiingford". Everybody now did not talk 
of Mrs. Thomson’s extraordinary will, and 
John Brown’s wonderful chance of coming 
into twenty thousand pounds. People had 
even given over noting that the young doc- 
tor had thought better of that foolish fancy 
of "his for Bessie Christian. All the persons 
in this little drama had relapsed into the 
shade. It was a very heavy shadow so far 
as Grove Street was concerned. The little 
pupils had fallen off, collected again, fallen 


16 ' THE EXECUTOR. 


off once more. If the cheerful glimmer of 
firelight had never failed in the sick-room — 
if the helpless old father, sitting in that calm 
of infirmity and age, making comments which 
would have irritated his careful attendants 
beyond bearing if they had not been used to 
them, never missed any thing of his usual 
comforts — nobody knew at what cost these 
comforts were bought. But there did come 
a crisis in which patience and courage, and 
the steadfast soul which had carried the 
young breadwinner through the drear mo- 
notony of that year, failed her at last. Her 
mother, who was of a different temper from 
Bessie, and had gone through a thousand 
despairs and revivals before the young crea- 
ture at her side began to droop, saw that 
the time had come when every thing was at 
stake ; and, more reluctantly and slowly, 
Bessie herself came to see it. She coifid 
not set her back against the wall of that 
little house of theirs and meet every assail- 
ant ; she could not tide it out in heroic si- 
lence, and abstinence alike from comfort and 
complaint. That was her natural impulse ; 
and the victory, if slow, would have been 
certain : so Bessie thought at least. But 
want was at the door, and they could not 
afford to wait ; something else must be at- 
tempted. Bessie must go out into the mar- 
ket-place and seek new masters — there was 
no longer work for her here. 

This was how the scene was shifted in the 
follow/ng conclusive act. 

John Brown, travelling, and fuming and 
aggravating himself much over the loss of 
his time and the distraction of his thoughts, 
was in London that day — a May-day, when 
everybody was in London. He had seen his 
detective, and no further intelligence had 
been obtained. Phoebe Thomson was as 
far off as ever — farther off; for now that 
all these efforts had been made, it was clear 
that either she must be dead or in some quar- 
ter of the world impervious to newspaper ad- 
vertisements and detective officers. Mr. 
Brown bore the disappointment with a very 
good grace. He felt contented now to slacken 
his efforts ; he even felt as if he himself were 
already the possessor of old Mrs. Thomson’s 
twenty thousand pounds. As he went leis- 
urely through the streets, he paused before 
one of those “ Scholastic Agency ” offices 
which abound in the civilized end of London. 


It -was in the ground-floor of a great, faded, 
sombre house, in a street near St. James’ 
Park — a place of aching interest to some 
people in that palpitating world of human 
interests. It occurred to Mr. Brown to go 
in and see if there were any lists to be looked 
over. Phoebe Thomson might have a daugh- 
ter who might be a governess. It was an 
absurd idea enough, and he knew it to be , 
so; nevertheless he swmng open the green j. 
baize door. 

Inside, before the desk, stood a little fig- 
ure which he knew well, still in that black 
dress which she had worn when she ran across j 
Grove Street and wanted to speak to him ; j 
with a curl of the light hair, wLich looked I 
so fair and full of color on her black shawl, 
escaped from under her bonnet, talking softly 
and eagerly to the clerk. Was there no other 
place he could send her to ? She had come 
up from the country, and w^as so very reluc- ! 
tant to go down -without hearing of some- i , 
thing. The man shook his head, and read over . 
to her several entries in his book. Bessie ; 
turned round speechless towards the door. 
Seeing some one standing there, she lifted i 
her eyes full upon John Browm. Troubled j 
and yet steady, full of tears yet clear and see- | 
ing clear, shining blue like the skies, with a 
great patience, these. eyes encountered the 
unexpected familiar face. If she felt an ad- i 
ditional pang in seeing him, or if any grudge 
against the supplanter of her family trem- 
bled in Bessie’s heart, it made no sign upon i 
her face. She said “ good-morning ” cheer- i 
fully as she went past him, and only quick- j 
ened her pace a little to get out of sight. \ 
She did not take any notice of the rapid step v 
after her ; the step which could have made ^ 
up to her in two paces, but did not, restrained | 
by an irresolute will. Probably she knew ‘ 
whose step it was, and interpreted rightly, to ' 
some superficial degree, the feelings of John ( 
Brown. She thought he was a good-hearted • 
man — she thought he was sorry to know or ' 
guess the straits which Bessie thanked ; 
Heaven nobody in this world did fully know 
— she thought, by and by, shy of intruding 
upon her, that step would drop off, and she , 
would hear it no more. But it was not so , 
to be. j 

“ Miss Christian, I want to speak to you,” 
said John Brown. 

. She turned towards him directly without 


THE EXECUTOR. 17 


any pretence of surprise ; and with a smile, 
the best she could muster, waited to hear 
what it was. 

“ We are both walking the same way,” 
said Mr. Brown. 

Ill spite of herself amazement woke upon 
Bessie’s face. “ That is true : but was that 
all that you had to say ? ” said Bessie, with 
the smiles kindling all her dimples. The 
dimples had only been hidden by fatigue, 
and hardship, and toil. They were all there. 

“No, not quite. Were you looking for 
employment in that office ? and why are you 
seeking employment here ? ” said the attor- 
ney, looking anxiously down upon her. 

“Because there’s a great many of us in 
Carlingford,” said Bessie, steadily ; “ there 
arc half as many governesses as there are 
children. I thought I might perhaps get on 
better here.” 

“ In London ! Do you think there are 
fewer governesses here ? ” said-Mr. Brown, 
going on with his questions, and meanwhile 
studying very closely his little companion’s 
face ; not rudely. To be sure it was a very 
honest direct investigation, but there was 
not a thought of rudeness or disrespect either 
in the eyes that made it or the heart. 

“I dare say it’s as bad every^vhere,” said 
Bessie, with a little sigh; “but when one 
cannot get work in one place, one naturally 
turns to another. I had an appointment to- 
day to come up to sec a lady ; but I was not 
the proper person. Perhaps I shall have to 
stay at homo after all.” 

“ Have you any grudge at me ? ” said Mr. 
Brown. 

Bessie looked up open-eyed and wonder- 
ing. “ Grudge ? at ?/om? How could I? I 
dare say,” said Bessie, with a sigh and a 
smile, “mamma had, a year ago; but not 
me. The times I have spoken to you, Mr. 
Brown, you have always been kind to me.” 

“Have I?” said the lawyer. He gave 
her a strange look, and stopped short, as if 
his utterance was somehow impeded. Kind 
to her ! He remembered that time in Grove 
Street, and could have scourged himself at 
the recollection. Bessie had taken him en- 
tirely aback by her simple expression. He 
could have sobbed under that sudden touch. 
To sec her walking beside him, cheerful, 
steadfast, without a complaint— a creature 
separated from the world, from vouth and 

CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


pleasure, and mere comfort even — enduring 
hardness, for all her soft childlike dimples 
and unaffected smiles — his composure was 
entirely overcome. He was going to do 
something very foolish. He gasped, and 
gave himself up. 

“If you don’t bear me a grudge, come 
over into the Park here, where wo can hear 
ourselves speak. I want to speak to you,” 
said Mr. Brown. 

She turned into the Park with him quite 
simply, as she did every thing without 
any pretence of wonder or embarrassment. 
There he walked a long time by her side in 
silence, she waiting for what he had to say, 
he at the most overwhelming loss how to 
say it. The next thing he said was to ask 
her to sit down in a shady, quiet corner, 
where there w'as an unoccupied seat. She 
was very much fatigued. It was too bad of 
him to bring her out of her way. 

“But it is so noisy in the street,” said 
Mr. Brown. Then, with a pause after this 
unquestionable truism, “ I’ve been thinking 
about you this very long time.” 

Bessie looked up quickly with great 
amazement ; thinking of her ! She was 
wiser when she cast her eyes down again. 
Mr. Brown had not the smallest conception 
that he had explained himself without say- 
ing a syllable, but he had, notwithstanding, 
leaving Bessie thunderstruck, yet v/ith a 
moment’s time to deliberate. While he 
went on with his embarrassed, slow expres- 
sions, fancying that he was gradually con- 
veying to her mind what he meant, Bessie, 
in a dreadful silent flutter and agitation, 
was revolving the whole matter, and asking 
herself what she was to answer. She had 
ten full minutes for this before he came to 
the point, and before, according to his idea, 
the truth burst upon her. But it is doubt- 
ful whether that ten minutes’ preparation 
was any advantage to Bessie. It destroyed 
the unconsciousness, which was her greatest 
charm ; it made an end of her straightfor- 
wardness ; worst of all, it left her silent. 
She gave a terrified glance up at him when 
it actually happened. There he stood full 
in the light, with all his awkwardnesses more 
clearly revealed than usual ; six-and-forty, 
abrupt, almost eccentric ; telling that story 
very plainly, without compliment or pas- 
sion ; would she have him ? He was con- 
2 


18 THE EXECUTOR. 


tent that she should think it over — he was 
content to wait for her answer ; but if it 
was to be no, let her say it out. 

Strange to say, that word which she was 
exhorted to say out did not come to Bessie’s 
lips. Perhaps because she trembled a great 
deal, and really lost her self-possession, and 
for the moment did not know what she was 
about. But even in her agitation she did 
not think of saying it. Mr. Brown, when 
he had his say out, marched up and down 
the path before her, and did not interrupt 
her deliberations. Another dreadful ten 
minutes passed over Bessie. The more she 
thought it over, the more bewildered she 
became as to what she was to say. 

“ Please would you walk with me to the 
railway,” were the words that came from 
Bessie’s lips at last. She rose up trembling 
and faint, and with a kind of instinct took 
Mr. Brown’s arm. He, on his part, did not 
say any thing to her. His agitation melted 
away into a subdued silent tenderness which 
did not need any expression. He took her 
back into the streets, all along that tiresome 
Vt'ay. He suffered the noise to surround and 
abstract her without any interruption which 
would make her conscious of his presence. 
It was a strange walk for both. To have 
called them lovers would have been absurd — 
to have supposed that here was a marriage 
of convenience about to be arranged would 
have been more ridiculous still. What was 
it ? Bessie went along the street in a kind 
of cloud, aware of nothing very clearly; 
feeling somehow that she leant upon some- 
body, and that it was somebody upon whom 
she had a right to lean. They reached the 
railway thus, without any further explana- 
tion. Mr. Brown put the trembling girl 
into a carriage, and did not go with her. 
The Carlingford attorney had turned into a 
paladin. Was it possible that his outer 
man itself had smoothed out and expanded 
too ? 

I am not going with you,” he said, 
grasping her hand closely. “ I wont em- 
barrass or distress you, Bessie ; but, recol- 
lect you have not said no ; and when I come 
to Grove Street to-morrow. I’ll hope to hear 
vou say yes. I’ll let you oft',” said John 


Brown, grasping the little soft hand so tight 
and hard that it hurt Bessie, “ I’ll let you 
off with liking, if you’ll give me that ; at my 
age I don’t even venture to say for myself 
that I’m very much in love.” 

And with that, the eyes, which had be- 
trayed him before, flashed in Bessie’s face 
a contradiction of her elderly lover’s w'ords. 
Yes ! it astounded himself almost as much 
as it did Bessie. He would still have flatly 
contradicted anybody who accused him of 
that folly ; but he went away with an unde- 
niable blush into the London streets, self- 
convicted. A year’s obseiwation and an 
hour’s talk had resulted in- a muoh less 
philosophical sentiment than Mr. Brown 
was prepared for. He went back to the 
streets, wondering what she would like in 
all those wonderful shop-windows. He 
traced back, step for step, the road they had 
come together. He was not six-and-forty — 
six-and-twenty was the true reading. That 
was a May-day of his youth that had come 
to him, sweet if untimely; a missed May- 
day, perhaps all the better that it had been 
kept for him these many tedious years. 

And though Bessie cried all the way down 
to Carlingford, the no she had not said did 
not occur to her as any remedy for her 
tears; and, indeed, when she remembered 
how she had taken Mr. Brown’s arm, and 
felt that she had committed herself by that 
act, the idea was rather a relief to Bessie. 
“ It was as bad as saying yes at once,” said 
she to herself, with many blushes. But 
thus, you perceive, it was done, and could 
not be altered. She must stand to the con- 
sequences of her weakness now. 

It made a great noise in Carlingford, as 
might be supposed; it made a vast differ- 
ence in the household of Mrs. Christian, 
which was removed to , the house in which 
she had formerly hoped to establish herself 
as heir-at-law. But the greatest difference 
of all was made in that dim, spacious, 
wainscoted dining-room, which did not 
know itself in its novel circumstances. That 
was where the change was most remarkably 
apparent ; and all these years Phoebe Thom- 
son’s shadow has thrown no cloud as yet 
over the path of John Brown. 


THE RECTOR. 


’i- 

THE RECTOR. 

CHAPTER I. 

It is natural to suppose that the arrival 
of the new rector was a rather exciting event 
for Carlingford. It is a considerable town, 
it is true, now-a-days, but then there are no 
alien activities to disturb the place — no man- 
ufactures, and not much trade. And there 
is a very respectable amount of very good 
society at Carlingford. To begin with, it is 
a pretty place — mild, sheltered, not far 
from town ; and naturally its very reputation 
for good society increases the amount of that 
much-prized article. The advantages of the 
town in this respect have already put five per 
cent upon the house-rents; but this, of 
course, only refers to the real town, where 
you can go through an entire street of high 
garden-walls, with houses inside full of the 
retired exclusive comforts, the dainty, eco- 
nomical refinement peculiar to such places ; 
and where the good people consider their 
own society as a warrant of gentility less 
splendid, but not less assured, than the favor 
of majesty itself. Naturally there are no 
Dissenters in Carlingford — that is to say, 
none above the rank of a greengrocer or 
milkman ; and in bosoms devoted to the 
Church it may be well imagined that the 
advent of the new rector was an eVent full 
of importance, and even of excitement. 

He was highly spoken of, everybody knew ; 
but nobody knew who had spoken highly of 
liim, nor had been able to find out, even by 
inference, what were his views. The Church 
had been low during the last rector’s reign — 
profoundly low — lost in the deepest abysses 
of Evangelicalism. A determine dinclina- 
tion to preach to everybody had seized upon 
that good man’s brain ; he had half emptied 
Salem Chapel, there could be no doubt; 
but, on the other hand, he had more than 
half filled the Chapel of St. Roque, half a 
mile out of Carlingford, where the perpetual 
curate, young, handsome, and fervid, was on 
the very topmost pinnacle of Anglicanism. 
St. Roque’s was not more than a pleasant 
walk from the best quarter of Carlingford, on 
the north side of the town, thank Hbaven ! 
which one could get at without the dread 
passage of that new horrid suburb, to which 
young Mr. Rider, the young doctor, was de- 
voting himself. But the Evangelical rector 
was dead, and his reign w'as over, and no- 


19 

body could predict what the character of the 
new administration was to be. The obscur- 
ity in which the new rector had buried his 
views was the most extraordinary thing 
about him. He had taken high honors at 
college, and was “highly spoken of;” but 
whether he was high, or low, or broad, mus- 
cular or sentimental, sermonizing or decora- 
tive, nobody in the world seemed able to tell. 

“ Fancy if he were just to be a Mr. Bury 
over again ! Fancy him going to the canal, 
and having sermons to the bargemen, and 
attending to all sorts of people except to us, 
whom it is his duty to attend to ! ” cried one 
of this much-canvassed clergyman’s curious 
parishioners. “Indeed, I do believe he 
must be one of these people. If he were in 
society at all, somebody would be sure to 
know.” 

“Lucy dear, Mr. Bury christened you,” 
said another not less curious but more toler- 
ant inquirer. 

“ Then he did you the greatest of all ser- 
vices,” cried the third member of the little 
group which discussed the new rector under 
Mr. Wodehouse’s blossomed apple-trees. 
“ He conferred such a benefit upon you that 
he deserves all reverence at your hand. 
Wonderful idea ! a man confers this greatest 
of Christian blessings on multitudes, and 
does not himself appreciate the boon he con- 
veys ! ” 

“ Well, for that matter, Mr. Wentworth, 
you ^now — ” said the elder lady ; but she 
got no farther. Though she was verging 
upon forty, leisurely, pious, and unmarried, 
that good Miss Wodehouse was not polemi- 
cal. She had “ her own opinions,” but fe^ 
people knew much about them. She was 
seated on a green garden-bench which sur- 
rounded the great May-tree in that large, 
warm, well-furnished garden. The high 
brick walls, all clothed with fruit-trees, shut 
in an enclosure of which not a morsel, ex- 
cept this velvet grass, with its nests of dai- 
sies, was not under the highest and most 
careful cultivation. It was such a scene as 
is only to be found in an old country town ; 
the walls jealous of intrusion, yet thrusting 
tail plumes of lilac and stray branches of 
apple-blossom, like friendly salutations to 
the world without; within, the blossoms 
dropping over the light, bright head of Lucy 
Wodehouse underneath the apple-trees, and 
impertinently flecking the Rev. Cecil Went- 


20 the rector. 


worth’s Anglican coat. These two last were 
young people, with that indefinable harmony 
in their looks which prompts the suggestion 
of “ a handsome couple ” to the bystander. 
It had not even occurred to them to be in 
love with each other, so far as anybody 
knew, yet few were the undiscerning persons 
who saw them together without instinctively 
placing the young curate of St. Roque’s in 
perm anence by Lucy’s side. She was twenty, 
pretty, blue-eyed, and full of dimples, with 
a broad Leghorn hat throwm carelessly on 
her head, untied, with broad strings of blue 
ribbon falling among her fair curls — a blue 
which was “’repeated,” according to painter 
jargon, in ribbons at her throat and w’aist. 
She had great gardening-gloves on, and a 
basket and huge pair of scissors on the grass 
at her feet, which grass, besides, was strewn 
■with a profusion of all the sweetest spring 
blossoms — the sweet narcissus, most exquis- 
ite of flowers, lilies of the valley, W’hite and 
blue hyacinths, golden ranunculus globes — 
■worlds of sober, deep-breathing wallflower. 
If Lucy had been doing what her kind elder 
sister called her “ duty,” she would have 
been at this moment arranging her flowers 
in the drawing-rpom ; but the times were 
rare when Lucy did her duty according to 
Miss ’Wodehouse’s estimate ; so instead of 
arranging those clusters of narcissus, she 
clubbed them together in her hands into a 
fragrant, dazzling sheaf, and discussed the 
new rector — ^not unaware, perhaps, in her 
secret heart, that the sweet morning, the 
sunshine and flowers, and exhilarating air, 
were somehow secretly enhanced by the 
presence of that black Anglican figure under 
the apple-trees. 

“But I suppose,” said Lucy, with a sigh, 
“we must wait till we see him; and if I 
must be very respectful of Mr. Bury because 
he christened me, I am heartily glad the new 
rector has no claim upon my reverence. I 
have been christened, I have been con- 
firmed — ” 

“But, Lucy, my dear, the chances are he 
will marry you,” said Miss AYodehouse, 
calmly ; “ indeed, there can be no doubt 
that it is only natural he should, for he is 
the rector, you know ; and though we go so 
often to St. Roque’s, Mr. Wentworth will 
excuse me saying that he is a very young 
man.” 

Miss Wodehouse was knitting ; she did 


not see the sudden look of dismay and 
amazement which the curate of St. Roque’s 
darted down upon her, nor the violent sym- 
pathetic blush -R-hich blazed over both the 
young faces. How shocking that elderly 
quiet people should have such a faculty for 
suggestions ! You may be sure Lucy Wode- 
house and young Wentworth, had it not 
been “ put into their heads ” in such an ab- 
surd fashion, would never, all their virtuous 
lives, have dreamt of any thing but friend- 
ship. Deep silence ensued after this simple 
but startling speech. Miss Wodehouse 
knitted on, and took no notice ; Lucy began 
to gather ■up the flowers into the basket, un- 
able for her life to think of something to 
say. For his part, Mr. Wentworth gravely • 
picked the apple-blossoms oif his coat, and 
counted them in his hand. That sweet sum- 
mer snow kept dropping, dropping, falling 
here and there as the wind carried it, and 
with a special attraction to Lucy and her blue 
ribbons ; while behind. Miss Wodehouse sat 'I 
calmly on the green bench, under the May- 
tree just beginning to bloom, without lifting 
her eyes from her knitting. Not far off, the 
bright English house, all beaming with open 
doors and -wfindow^s, shone in the sunshine. 
With the white May peeping out among the 
green overhead, and the sweet narcissus in | 
a great dazzling sheaf upon the grass, mak- 
ing all the air fragrant around them, can i 
anybody fancy a s^weeter domestic out-of- | 
door scene ? or else it seemed so to the per- 
petual curate of St. Roque’s. 

Ah me ! and if he wns to be perpetual 
curate, and none of his great friends thought 
upon him, or had preferment to bestow, how 
do you suppose he could ever, ever marry 
Lucy Wodehouse, if they were to wait a hun- 
dred years ? 

Just then the garden-gate— the green gate 
in the wall — opened to the creaking murmur 
of Mr. Wodehouse’s own key. Mr. Wode- 
house was a man who creaked universally. 

His boots were a heavy infliction upon the 
good-humor of his household ; and like every 
other invariable quality of dress, the pecul- 
iarity became identified with him in every 
particular of his life. Every thing belong- 
ing to him moved with a certain jar, except, 
indeed, his household, which went on noise- 
less wheels, thanks to Lucy and love. As 
he came along the garden-path, the gravel 
started all round his unmusical foot. Miss 


THE RECTOR. 21 


AVodeh^se alone turned round to hail her 
father’s approach, but both the young people 
looked up at her instinctively, and saw her 
little start, the falling of her knitting-nee- 
dles, the little flutter of color which surprise 
brought to her maidenly, middle-aged cheek. 
How they both divined it I cannot tell, but 
it certainly was no surprise to either of them 
when a tall, embarrassed figure, following 
the portly one of Mr. Wodehouse stepped 
suddenly from the noisy gravel to the quiet 
grass, and stood gravely awkward behind 
the father of the house. 

My dear children, here’s the rector — de- 
lighted to see him! we’re all delighted to 
see him ! ” cried Mr. AVodchouse. “ This is 
my little girl Lucy, and this is my eldest 
daughter. They’re both as good as curates, 
though I say it, you know, as shouldn’t. I 
suppose you’ve got something tidy for lunch, 
Lucy, eh ? To be sure you ought to know 
— how can I tell ? She might have had only 
cold mutton, for any thing I knew — and 
that wont do, you know, after college fare. 
Hollo, AVentworth! I beg- your pardon — 
who thought of seeing you here ? I thought 
you had morning service, and all that sort 
of thing. Delighted to make you known to 
the rector so soon. Mr. Proctor — Mr. 
Wentworth of St. Iloque’s.” 

The rector bowed. He had no time to say 
any thing, fortunately for him ; but a vague 
sort of color fluttered over his face. It was 
his first living ; and cloistered in All-Souls 
for fifteen years of his life, how is a man to 
know all at once how to accost his parishion- 
ers ? especially when these curious unknown 
<?pecimens of natural life happen to be fe- 
male creatures, doubtless accustomed to com- 
pliment and civility. If ever any one was 
thankful to hear the sound of another man’s 
voice, that person was the now rector of Car- 
lingford, standing in the bewildering gar- 
den-scene into which the green door had so 
suddenly admitted him, all but treading on 
the dazzling bundle of narcissus, and turn- 
ing with embarrassed politeness from the 
perpetual curate, whose salutation was less 
cordial than it might have been, to those in- 
definite flutters of blue ribbon from which 
Mr. Proctor’s tall figure divided the ungra- 
cious young man. 

“But come along to lunch. Bless me! 
don’t let us be too ceremonious,” cried Mr. 
Wodehouse. “ Take Luev, my dear sir- 


take Lucy. Though she has her garden- 
gloves on, she’s manager indoors for all that. 
Molly here is the one we coddle up and take 
care of. Put down your knitting, child, and 
don’t make an old woman of yourself. To 
be sure, it’s your own concern — you should 
know best ; but that’s my opinion. AVhy, 
AVentworth, where are you off to ? ’Tisn’t a 
fast, surely — is it, Mary ? — nothing of the 
sort ; it’s Thursday — Thursday, do you hear? 
and the rector newly arrived. Come along.” 

“lam much obliged, but I have an ap- 
pointment,” began the curate, with restraint. 

“ AVhy didn’t you keep it, then, before we 
came in,” cried Mr. AA^odehouse, “ chatting 
with a couple of girls like Lucy and Mary ? 
Come along, come along — an appointment 
with some old woman or other, who w^ants to 
screw flannels and things out of you — well, 
I suppose so ! I don’t know any thing else 
you could have to say to them. Come 
along.” 

“ Thank you. I shall hope to wait on 
the rector shortly,” said young Wentworth, 
more and more stiffly ; “ but at present I 
am sorry it is not in my power. Good-morn- 
ing, Miss AVodehouse — good-morning j lam 
happy to have had the opportunity — ” and 
the voice of the perpetual curate died off 
into vague murmurs of poMteness as he made 
his way towards the green door. 

That green door ! what a slight, paltry 
barrier — one plank, and no more ; but out- 
side a dusty, dry road, nothing to be seen 
but other high brick w'alls, with here and 
there an apple-tree or a lilac, or the half-de- 
veloped flower-turrets of a chestnut looking 
over — nothing to bo seen but a mean little 
costermonger’s cart, with a hapless donkey, 
and, dow’n in the direction of St. Roque’s, 
the long road winding, still drier and dus- 
tier. Ah me! was it paradise inside? or 
w'as it only a merely mortal lawm dropped 
over with apple-blossoms, blue ribbons, and 
other vanities ? AVho could tell ? The per- 
petual curate wended sulky on his way. I 
fear the old woman would have made neither 
flannel nor tea and sugar out of him in that 
inhuman frame of mind. 

“ Dreadful young prig that young AVent- 
worth,” said Mr. AVodehouse, “but comes 
of a great family, you know, and gets greatly 
taken notice of — to be sure he aoes, child.. 
I suppose it’s for his family’s sake : I can’t 
see into people’s hearts. It may be higher 


THE RECTOR. 


iTiotives,/^^) be sure, and all that. He’s gone 
off in a huff about something ; never mind, 
luncheon comes up all the same. Now let’s 
address ourselves to the business of life.” 

For when Mr. Wodehouse took knife and 
fork in hand a singular result followed. He 
was silent — at least he talked no longer : the 
mystery of carving, of eating, of drink- 
ing — all the serious business of the table 
— engrossed the good man. He had noth- 
ing more to say for the moment ; and then 
a dread, unbroken silence fell upon the Lit- 
tle company. The rector colored, faltered, 
cleared his throat — he had not an idea how 
to get into conversation with such unknown 
entities. He looked hard at Lucy, with a 
bold intention of addressing her 5 but, hav- 
ing the bad fortune to meet her eye, shrank 
back, and withdrew the venture. Then the 
good man inclined his profile towards Miss 
Wodehouse. His eyes wandered wildly 
round the room in search of a suggestion ; 
but, alas ! it was a mere dining-room, very 
comfortable, but not imaginative. In this 
dreadful dilemma ho was infinitely relieved 
by the sound of somebody’s voice. 

“ I trust you will like Carlingford, Mr. 
Proctor,” said Miss Wodehouse, mildly. 

“ Yes — oh, yes ; I trust so,” answered the 
confused but grateful man ; “ that is, it will 
depend very much, of course, on the kind of 
people I find here.” 

“ Well, we are a little vain. To tell the 
truth, indeed, we rather pride ourselves a 
little on the good society in Carlingford,” 
said the gentle and charitable interlocutor. 

“Ah, yes — ladies?” said the rector: 
“hum — that was not what I was thinking 
of.” 

But, O, Mr. Proctor,” cried Lucy, with 
a sudden access of fun, “ you don’t mean 
to say that you dislike ladies’ society, I 
hope ? ” 

The rector gave an uneasy, half-frightened 
glance at her. The creature was dangerous 
even to a Fellow of All-Souls. 

“ I may say I know very little about them,” 
said the bewildered clergyman. As soon as 
he had said the words he thought they 
sounded rude ; but how could he help it ? — 
the truth of his speech was indisputable. 

“ Come here, and we’ll initiate you — 
come here as often as you can spare us a lit- 
tle of your time,” cried Mr. Wodehouse, 
who had come to a pause in his operations. 


“ You couldn’t have a better chance. They’re 
head people in Carlingford, though I say it. 
There’s Mary, she’s a learned ^roman ; take 
you up in a false quantity, sir, a deal sooner 
than I should. And Lucy, she’s in another 
line altogether; but there’s quantities of 
people swear by her. What’s the matter, 
children, eh? I sui^pose so — people tell me 
so. If people tell me so all day long. I’m 
entitled to believe it, I presume ? ” [ 

Lucy answered this by a burst of laugh- 
ter, not loud but cordial, which rung sweet 
and strange upon the rector’s ears. Miss 
Wodehouse, on the contrary, looked a little 
ashamed, blushed a pretty pink, old-maidenly 1 

blush, and mildly remonstrated with papa. j 
The whole scene was astonishing to the j 
stranger. He had been living out of nature j 
so long that he wondered within himseli j 
whether it was common to retain the habits | 
and words of childhood to such an age as 
that which good Miss Wodehouse put no 
disguise upon, or if sisters with twenty years 
of difference between them were usual in or- 
dinary households. He looked at them with 
looks which to Miss Wodehouse appeared 
disapproving, but which in reality meant 
only surprise and discomfort. He was ex- 
ceedingly glad when lunch was over, and he 
was at liberty to take his leave. With very 
different feelings from those of young Went- 
worth, the rector crossed the boundary oi 
that green door. When he saw' it closed be- 
hind him he drew a long breath of relief, and 
looked up and down the dusty road, and 
through those lines of garden walls, where 
the loads of blossoms burst over everyw'here, 
with a sensation of having escaped and got 
at liberty. After a momentary pause and 
gaze round him in enjoyment of that liberty, 
the rector gave a start and went^ on again 
rapidly. A dismayed, discomfited, helpless 
sensation came over him. These parishion- 
ers ! — these female parishioners ! From out 
of another of those green doors had just 
emerged a brilliant group of ladies, the rus- 
tle of whose dress and murmur of whose 
voices he could hear in the genteel half-ru- 
ral silence. The rector bolted; he never 
slackened pace nor drew breath till he w'as 
safe in the vacant library of the rectory, 
among old Mr. Bury’s book-shelves. It 
seemed the only safe place in Carlingford to 
the languishing transplanted Fellow of All- 
Souls. 


THE RECTOR. 


CHAPTER II. 

A MONTH later, Mr. Proctor had got fairly 
settled in his new rectory, with a complete 
modest establishment becoming his means 
— for Carlingford was a tolerable living. 
And in the newly furnished, sober drawing- 
room, sat a very old lady, lively, but infirm, 
who was the rector’s mother. Nobody knew 
that this old woman kept the Fellow of All- 
Souls still a boy at heart, nor that the re- 
served and inappropriate man forgot his 
awkwardness in his mother’s presence. He 
was not only a very aflfectionate son, but a 
dutiful good child to her. It had been his 
pet scheme for years to bring her from her 
Devonshire cottage, and make her mistress 
of his house. That had been the chief at- 
traction, indeed, which drew him to Carling- 
ford ; for had he consulted his own tastes, 
and kept to his college, who would insure 
him that at seventy-five his old mother might 
not glide away out of life without that last 
gleam of sunshine long intended for her by 
her grateful son ? 

This scene, accordingly, was almost the 
only one which reconciled him to the extraor- 
dinary change in his life. There she sat, the 
lively old lady ; very deaf, as you could al- 
most divine by that vivid inquiring twinkle 
in her eyes ; feeble, too, for she had a silver- 
beaded cane beside her chair, and even with 
that assistance seldom moved across the 
room wdien she could help it. Feeble in 
body, but alert in mind, ready to read any 
thing, to hear any thing, to deliver her opivi- 
ions freely ; resting in her big chair in the 
complete repose of age, gratified with her 
son’s attentions, and overjoyed in his com- 
pany ; interested about every thing, and as 
ready to enter into all the domestic concerns 
of the new people as if she had lived all her 
life among them. The rector sighed and 
smiled as he listened to his mother’s ques- 
tions, and did his best at the top of his voice, 
to enlighten her. His mother was, let us 
say, a hundred years or so younger than the 
rector. If she had been his bflde, and at 
the blithe commencement of life, she could 
not have shown more inclination to know all 
about Carlingford. Mr. Proctor was mid- 
dle-aged, and pre-occupied by right of his 
years ; but his mother had long ago got over 
that stage of life. She was at that point 
when some energetic natures, having got to 
the bottom of the hill, seem to make a fresh 


23 

start and re-ascend. Five years ^go, old 
Mrs. Proctor had completed the human term ; 
now she had recommenced her life. 

But, to tell the very truth, the rector would 
very fain, had that been possible, have con- 
fined her inquiries to books and public af- 
fairs. For to make confidential disclosures, 
either concerning one’s self or other people, 
in a tone of voice perfectly audible in the 
kitchen, is somewhat trying. He had be- 
come acquainted with those dread parishion- 
ers of his during this interval. Already they 
had worn him to death with dinner-parties 
— dinner-parties very pleasant and friendly, 
when one got used to them ; but to a stran- 
ger frightful reproductions of each other, 
with the same dishes, the same dresses, the 
same stories, in which the rector communi- 
cated gravely with his next neighbor, and 
eluded as long as he could those concluding 
moments in the drawing-room, which were 
worst of all. It cannot be said that his pa- 
rishioners made much progress in their 
knowledge of the rector. What his “ view's ” 
w'erc, nobody could divine any more than 
tlrcy could before his arrival. He made no 
innovations whatever ; but he did not pur- 
sue Mr. Bury’s Evangelical ways, and never 
preached a sermon or a wof& more than was 
absolutely necessary.’ When zealous church- 
men discussed the progress of dissent, the 
rector scarcely looked interested ; and no- 
body could move him to express an opinion 
concerning all that lovely upholstery with 
which Mr. Wentworth had decorated St. 
Iloque’s. People asked in vain, what was 
he? He was neither High or Low, en- 
lightened nor narrow-minded ; he was a Fel- 
low of All-Souls. 

“ But now tell me, my dear,” said old Mrs. 
Proctor, “ who’s Mr. Wodehouse ? ” 

With despairing calmness, the rector ap- 
proached his voice to her ear. “ He’s a 
churchwarden ! ” cried the unfortunate man, 
in a shrill whisper. 

“ He’s what ? — you forget I don’t hear 
very w'ell. I’m a great deal deafer, Morley, 
my dear, than I w'as the last time you were 
in Devonshire. What did you say Mr. 
Wodehouse was?” 

“ He’s an ass ! ” exclaimed the baited rec- 
tor. 

Mrs. Proctor nodded her head wdth a great 
many little satisfied assenting nods. 

‘‘ Exactly my own opinion, my dear. What 


THE RECTOR. 


24 

I like in your manner of expressing your- 
self, Jrtoiiey, is its conciseness,” said the 
laughing old lady. “ Just so — exactly what 
I imagined; but being an ass, you know, 
doesn’t account for him coming here so often. 
What is he besides, my dear ? ” 

The rector made spasmodic gestures tow- 
ards the door, to the great amusement of 
his lively mother ; and then produced, with, 
much confusion, and after a long search, his 
pocket-book, on a leaf of paper in which he 
wrote — loudly, in big characters — “ He’s a 
churchwarden — they’ll hear in the kitchen.” 

“ lie’s a churchwarden ! And what if they 
do hear in the kitchen ? ” cried the old lady, 
greatly amused ; “ it isn’t a sin. Well, 
now, let me hear: has he a family, Mor- 
ley ? ” 

Again Mr. Proctor showed a little discom- 
posure. After a troubled look at the door, 
and pause, as if he meditated a remonstrance, 
he changed his mind, and answered, “ Two 
daughters ! ” shouting sepulchrally into his 
mother’s ear. 

“Oh, so!” cried the old lady — 
daughters — so, so — that explains it all at 
once. I know now v/hy he comes to the 
rectory so often. And, I declare, I never 
thought of it before. Why, you’re always 
there ! — so, so — and he’s got two daughters, 
has he ? To be sure ; now I understand it 
all.” 

The rector looked helpless and puzzled. 
It was difficult to take the initiative and ask 
why — but the poor man looked so perplexed 
and ignorant, and so clearly unaware what 
the solution was, that the old lady burst 
into shrill, gay laughter as she looked at 
him. 

“-I don’t believe you know any thing 
about it,” she said. “ Are they old or young ? 
are they pretty or ugly ? Tell me all about 
them, Morley.” 

Now Mr. Proctor had not the excuse of 
having forgotten the appearance of the two 
Miss Wodehouses : on the contrary, though 
not an imaginative man, he could have fan- 
cied he saw them both before him— Lucy 
lost in noiseless laughter, and her good el- 
der sister deprecating and gentle as usual. 
We will not even undertake to say that a 
gleam of something blue did not flash across 
the mind of the good man, who did not know 
what ribbons were. He was so much be- 
wildered that Mrs. Proctor repeated her 


question, and, as she did so, tapped him 
pretty smartly on the arm to recall his wan- 
dering thoughts. 

“ One’s one thing,” at last shouted the 
confused man, “ and t’other’s another ! ” An 
oracular deliverance which surely must have 
been entirely unintelligible in the kitchen, 
where we will not deny that an utterance so 
incomprehensible awoke a laudable curiosity. 

“ My dear, you’re lucid I ” cried the old 
lady. “ I hope you don’t preach like that. 
’T’other’s another ! — is she so ? and I sup- 
pose that’s the one you’re wanted to marry 
— eh ? For shame, Morley, not to tell your 
mother ! ” 

The rector jumped to his feet, thunder- 
struck. Wanted to marry ! — the idea was 
too overwhelming and dreadful — his mind 
could not receive it. The air of alarm which 
immediately diffused itself all over him — his 
unfeigned horror at the suggestion — capti- 
vated his mother. She was amused, but she 
was pleased at the same time. Just making 
her cheery outset on this second lifetime, 
you can’t sujjpose she would have been glad 
to hear that her son was going to jilt her, 
and appoint another queen in her stead. 

“ Sit down and tell me about them,” said 
Mrs. Proctor ; “ my dear, you’re wonderfully 
afraid of the servants hearing. They don’t 
know who we’re speaking of. Aha ! and so 
you didn’t know what they meant — didn’t 
you ? I don’t say you shouldn’t marry, my 
dear— quite the reverse. A man ought to 
marry, one time or another. Only it’s 
rather soon to lay their plans. I don’t doubt 
there’s a great many unmarried ladies in your 
church, Morley. There always is in a coun- 
try place.” 

To this the alarmed rector answered only 
by a groan — a groan so expressive that his 
quick-witted mother heard it with her eyes* 

“ They will come to call on me,” said Mrs. 
Proctor, with fire dancing in her bright old 
eyes. “ I’ll tell you all about them, and 
you needn’t be afraid of the servants. Trust 
to me, my dear— I’ll find them out. And 
now, if you wish to take a walk, or go out 
visiting, don’t let me detain you, Morley. 

I shouldn’t wonder but there’s something 
in the papers I would like to see— or I even 
might close my eyes for a few minutes : the 
afternoon is always a drowsy time with me. 
yjhen I was in Devonshire, you know, no 
one minded what I did. You had better, re 


THE RECTOR. 25 


fresh yourself with a nice walk, my dear 
boy.” 

The rector got up well pleased. The alac- 
rity with which ho left the room, however, 
did not correspond with the horror-stricken 
and helpless expression of his face, when, 
after walking very smartly all round the 
rectory garden, he paused with his hand on 
the gate, doubtful whether to retreat into 
his study, or boldly to face that world which 
was plotting against him. The question w^as 
a profoundly serious one to Mr. Proctor. 
He did not feel by any means sure that he 
was a free agent, or could assert the ordinary 
rights of an Englishman, in this most unex- 
pected dilemma. How could he tell how 
much or how little w^as necessary to prove 
that a man had “ committed himself ” ? For 
any thing he could tell, somebody might be 
calculating upon him as her lover, and set- 
tling his future life for him. The rector was 
not vain — he did not think himself an 
Adonis ; he did not understand any thing 
about the matter, which indeed was beneath 
the consideration of a Fellow of All-Souls. 
But have not women been ineomprehensible 
since ever there was in this world a pen with 
sufficient command of words to call them so ? 
And is it not certain that, whether it may 
be to their advantage or disadvantage, every 
soul of them is plotting to marry somebody ? 
Mr. Proctor recalled in dim but frightful 
reminiscences stories w'hich had dropped 
upon his ear at various times of his life. 
Never w'as there a man, how^ever ugly, disa- 
greeable, or penniless, but he could tell of a 
narrow escape he had, some time or other. 
The rector recollected and trembled. No 
woman was ever so dismayed by the perse- 
cutions of a lover, as was this helpless mid- 
dle-aged gentleman under the conviction 
that Lucy Wodehouse meant to marry him. 
The remembrance of the curate of St. Roque’s 
gave him no comfort ; her sweet youth, so 
totally unlike his sober age, did not strike 
him as unfavorable to her pursuit of him. 
Who could fathom the motives of a woman ? 
His mother ^vas w'ise, and knew the w’orld, 
and understood what such creatures meant. 
No doubt it W'as entirely the case — a dread- 
ful certainty — and what w'as he to do ? 

At the bottom of all this fright and per- 
plexity must it be owned that the rector had 
a guilty consciousness within himself, that if 
Lucy drove the matter to extremities, he w'as 


not so sure of his own powers of resistance 
as he ought to be ? She might marry him 
before he knew what she was about ; and 
in such a chance the rector could not have 
taken his oath at his own private confes- 
sional that he w'ould have been so deeply 
miserable as the circumstances might infer. 
No wonder he was deeply alarmed at the 
position in which he found himself ; nobody 
could predict how it might end. 

When ;Mr. Proctor saw his mother again 
at dinner, she was evidently full of some sub- 
ject which would not bear talking of before 
the servants. The old lady looked at her 
son’s troubled, apprehensive face with smiles 
and nods and gay hints, which he was much 
too pre-occupied to understand, and which 
only increased his bewilderment. When the 
good man was left alone over his glass of 
v;ine, he drank it slowly, in funereal silence, 
with profoundly serious looks ; and what 
between eagerness to understand what the 
old lady meant, and reluctance to show the 
extent of his curiosity, had a very heavy 
half-hour of it in that grave, solitary dining- 
room. He roused himself with an effort 
from this dismal state into which he was fall- 
ing. He recalled with a sigh the classic 
board of All-Souls. Woe for the day when 
he was seduced to forsake that dear retire- 
ment ! Really to suffer himself to fall into 
a condition so melancholy, was far from be- 
ing right. He must rouse himself — he must 
find some other society than parishioners ; 
and with a glimpse of a series of snug little 
dinner-parties, undisturbed by the presence 
of women, Mr. Proctor rose and hurried 
after his mother, to hear what new thing she 
might have to say. 

Nor W'as he disappointed. The old lady 
was snugly posted, ready for a conference. 
She made lively gestures to hasten him when 
he appeared at the door, and could scarcely 
delay the utterance of her news till he had 
taken his seat beside her. She had takej^ 
off her spectacles, and laid aside her paper, 
and cleared off her work into her w'ork-bas- 
ket. All Vvas ready for the talk in which 
she delighted. ^ 

“ My dear, they’ve been here,” said old 
Mrs. Proctor, rubbing her hands — “both to- 
gether, and as kind as could be — exactly as 
I expected. An old woman gets double the 
attention when she’s got an unmarried son. 
I’ve always observed that ; though in Dev- 


THE RECTOR. 


26 

onshire, what with your fellowship and see- 
ing you so seldom, nobody took much no- 
tice. Yes, they’ve been here ; and I like 
them a great deal better than I expected, 
Morley, my dear.” 

The rector, not knowing what else to say, 
shouted “ Indeed, mother ! ” into the old 
lady’s ear. 

Quite so,” continued that lively observer 
— “ nice young women — not at all like their 
father, which is a great consolation. That 
elder one is a very sensible person, I am 
sure. She would make a nice wife for sorAe- 
body, especially for a clergyman. She is not 
in her fii-st youth, but neither are some other 
people. A very nice creature indeed, I am 
quite sure.” 

During all this speech the rector’s .coun- 
tenance had been falling, falling. If he was 
helpless before, the utter woe of his expres- 
sion now was a spectacle to behold. The dan- 
ger of being married by proxy was appalling 
certainly, yet was not entirely without alle- 
viations ; but Miss W odehouse ! who ever 
thought of Miss Wodehouse ? To see the 
last remains of color fade out of his cheek, 
and his very lip fall with disappointment, 
was deeply edifying to his lively old mother. 
She perceived it all, but made no sign. 

“ And the other is a pretty creature — cer- 
tainly pretty : shouldn’t you say she was 
pretty, Morley ? ” said his heartless mother. 

Mr. Proctor hesitated, hemmed — felt him- 
self growing red — tried to intimate his sen- 
timents by a nod of assent ; but that would 
not do ; for the old lady had presented her 
ear to him, and was blind to all his gestures. 

“ I don’t know much about it, mother,” 
he made answer at last. 

“ Much about it ! it’s to be hoped not. I 
never supposed you did ; but you don’t mean 
to say you don’t think her pretty ? ” said 
Mrs. Proctor — “ but, I don’t doubt in the 
least, a sad flirt. Her sister is a very supe- 
ijjor person, my dear.” 

The rector’s face lengthened at every word 
— a vision of these two Miss Wodehouses 
rose upon him every moment clearer and 
more distinct as his mother spoke. Consid- 
ering how ignorant he was of all such fe- 
male paraphernalia, it is extraordinary how 
correct his recollection was of all the usual 
details of their habitual dress and appear- 
ance. With a certain dreadful consciousness 
of the justice of what his mother said, he 

I 


saw in imagination the mild elder sister in 
her comely old maidenhood. Nobody could 
doubt her good qualities, and could it be 
questioned that for a man of fifty, if he w'as 
to do any thing so foolish, a woman not quite 
forty was a thousand times more eligible 
than a creature in blue ribbons ? Still the 
unfortunate rector did not seem to see it : 
his face grew longer and longer — he made no 
answer whatever to his mother’s address ; 
while she, with a spice of natural female 
malice against the common enemy triumph- 
ing for the moment over the mother’s ad- 
miration of her son, sat wickedly enjoying 
his distress, and aggravating it. His dis- 
may and perplexity amused this wicked old ; 
woman beyond measure. 

“ I have no doubt that younger girl takes 
a pleasure in deluding her admirers,” said 
Mrs. Proctor ; she’s a wicked little flirt, 
and likes nothing better than to see her 
power. I know very w'ell how such people 
do ; but, my dear,” continued this false old j 
lady, scarcely able to restrain her laughter, 

“ if I w'ere you, I would be very civil to Miss 
Wodehouse. You may depend upon it, Mor- [ 
ley, that’s a very superior person. She is | 
not very young, to be sure, but you are not 
very young yourself. She would make a 
nice wife — not too foolish, you know’-, nor | 
fanciful. Ah ! I like Misa Wodehouse, my 
dear.” 

The rector stumbled up to his feet hastily, 
and pointed to a table at a little distance, 
on which some books were lying. Then he 
went and brought them to her table. “ IVe 
brought you some new books,” he shouted 
into her ear. It was the only way his 
clumsy ingenuity could fall upon for bring- 
ing this most distasteful conversation to an 
end. 

. The old lady’s eyes were dancing with fun . 
and a little mischief, but, notwithstanding, ^ 
she could not be so false to her nature as to 
show no interest in the books. She turned 
them over with lively remarks and comment. 

“ But for all that, Morley, I would not have . 
you forget Miss Wodehouse,” she said, when - 
her early bedtime came. “ Give it a thought i 
now and then, and consider the whole mat- 
ter. It is not a thing to be done rashly ; ' 
but vStill you know you are settled now, and 
you ought to be thinking of settling for life.” : 

With this parting shaft she left him. The j 
troubled rector, instead of sitting up to his 1 


t;ie rector. 


beloved studies, went early to bed that night, 
and was pursued by nightmares through his 
unquiet slumbers. Settling for life ! Alas ! 
there floated before him vain visions of 
that halcyon world he had left — that sacred 
soil at All- Souls, where there were no pa- 
ijshioners to break the sweet repose. How 
different was this discomposing real world ! 

Chapter hi. 

Matters went on quietly for some time 
without any catastrophe occurring to the 
rector. He had shut himself up from all 
society, and declined the invitations of the 
parishioners for ten long days at least ; but 
finding that the kind people were only kinder 
than ever when they understood he was “ in- 
disposed,” poor Mr. Proctor resumed his or- 
dinary life, confiding timidly in some extra 
precautions which his own ingenuity had in- 
vented. He was shyer than ever of address- 
ing the ladies in those parties he was obliged 
to attend. He was especially embarrassed 
and uncomfortable in the presence of the 
two Miss Wodehouses, who, unfortunately, 
were very popular in Carliugford, and whom 
he could not help meeting everywhere. Not- 
withstanding this embarrassment, it is curi- 
ous how well he knew how they looked, 
and what they were doing, and all about 
them. Though he could not for his life have 
told what these things were called, he knew 
Miss Wodehousc’s dove-colcred dress and 
her French gray ; and ail those gleams of 
blue which set off Lucy’s fair curls, and 
floated about her pretty person under vari- 
ous pretences, had a distinct though inartic- 
ulate place in the good man’s confused re- 
membrances. But neither Lucy nor Miss 
Wodeliouse had brought matters to extrem- 
ity. He even ventured to go to their house 
occasionally without any harm coming of it, 
and lingered in that blooming fragrant gar- 
den, where the blossoms had given place to 
fruit, and ruddy apples hung heavy on the 
Ibranches which had once scattered their 
petals, rosy-white, on Cecil Wentworth’s 
iA.nglican coat. Yet Mr. Proctor was not 
lulled into incaution by this seeming calm. 

, Other people besides his mother had inti- 
nated to him that there were expectations 
i jurrent of his “ settling in life.” He lived 
I lot in false security, but wise trembling, 

I lever knowing what hour the thunderbolt 
night fall upon his head. 


27 

It happened one day, while still in this 
condition of mind, that the rector was pass- 
ing through Grove Street on his way home. 
He was walking on the humbler side of the 
street, where there is a row of cottages 
with little gardens in front of them — cheap 
houses, which are contented to be haughtily 
overlooked by the staircase windows and 
blank walls of their richer neighbors on the 
other side of the road. The rector thought, 
but could not be sure, that he had seen two 
figures like those of the Miss Wodehouses 
going into one of these houses, and was 
making a little haste to escape meeting those 
enemies of his ‘peace. But as he went has^ 
tily on, he heard sobs and screams from one 
of the houses — sounds which a man who hid 
a good heart under a shy exterior could not 
willingly pass by. He made a troubled pause 
before the door from which these outcries 
proceeded, and while he stood thus irreso- 
lute whether to pass on or to stop and inquire 
the cause, some one came rushing out and 
took hold of his arm. “ Please, sir, she’s 
dying — oh, please, sir, she thought a deal o’ 
you. Please, will you come in and speak to 
her? ” cried the little servant-girl who had 
pounced upon him so. The rector stared at 
her in amazement. He had not his prayer- 
book — he was not prepared ; he had no idea 
of being called upon in such an emergency. 
In the mean time the commotion rather in- 
creased in the house, and he could hear in 
the distance a voice adjuring some one to 
go for the clergyman. The rector stood- un- 
certain and perplexed, perhaps in a more se- 
rious personal difficulty than had ever hap- 
pened to him all his life before. For what 
did he know about deathbeds ? or what had 
he to say to any one on that dread verge ? 
He grew pale with real vexation and dis- 
tress. 

“ Have they gone for a doctor ? that would 
'be more to the purpose,” he said, uncon- 
sciously, aloud. 

“ Please, sir, it’s no good,” said the little 
maid-servant. “ Please, the doctor’s been, 
but he’s no good — and she’s unhappy in her 
mind, though she’s quite resigned to go: 
and ob , please, if you would say a word to 
her, it might do her a deal of good.” 

Tl^us adjured, the rector had no choice. 
He went gloomily into the house and up the 
stair after his little guide. Why did not 
they send for the minister of Salem Chapel 


28 the rector. 


close by? or for Mr. Wentworth, who was 
accustomed to that sort of thing ? Why did 
they resort to liira in such an emergency P 
He would have made his appearance before 
the highest magnates of the land — before the 
queen herself — before the bench of bishops 
or the Privy Council — with less trepidation 
than he entered that poor little room. 

The sufferer lay breathing heavily in the 
poor apartment. She did not look very ill 
to Mr. Proctor’s inexperienced eyes. Her 
color was bright, and her face full of eager- 
ness. Near the door stood Miss Wodehouse, 
looking compassionate but helpless, casting 
wistful glances at the bed, but standing back 
in a corner as confused and embarrassed as 
the rector himself. Lucy was standing by 
the pillow of the sick woman with a watch- 
ful readiness visible to the most unskilled 
eye — ready to raise her, to change her po- 
sition, to attend to her wants almost before 
they were expressed. The contrast w’as w’on- 
derful. She had thrown off her bonnet and 
shawd,' and appeared, not like a stranger but 
somehow in her natural place, despite the 
sweet youthful beauty of her looks, and the 
gay girlish dress with its floating ribbons. 
These singular adjuncts notwithstanding, no 
homely nurse in a cotton gown could have 
looked more alert or serviceable, or more 
natural to the position, than Lucy did. The 
poor rector, taking the seat which the little 
maid placed for him directly in the centre of 
the room, looked at the nurse and the pa- 
tient with a gasp of perplexity and embar- 
rassment. A deathbed, alas ! w^as an un- 
known region to him. 

“ O sir. I’m obliged to you for coming — 
O sir. Pm grateful to you,” cried the poor 
woman in the bed. “ Pve been ill, off and 
on, for years, but never took thought to it 
as I ought. I’ve put off and put off w^aiting 
for a better time — and now', God help me, 
it’s perhaps too late. O. sir, tell me, when 
a person’s ill and dying, is it too late ? ” 

Before the rector could even imagine what 
he could answ'cr, the sick w'oman took up the 
broken thread of her own words, and con- 
tinued, — 

“ I don’t feel to trust as I ought to — I 
don’t feel no confidence,” she said, in anxious 
confession. “ 0 sir, do you think it piat- 
ters if one feels it P — don’t you think things 
miglit be right all the same though w’e icerc 
uneasy iii our minds ? My thinking can’t 


change it one way or another. Ask the good 
gentleman to speak to me. Miss Lucy, dear 
— he’ll mind what you say.” 

A look from Lucy quickened the rector’s 
speech, but increased his embarrassments. 

<< It — it isn’t her doctor she has no confidence 
in ? ” he said, eagerly. p 

The poor w'oman gave a little cry. “ The 
doctor — the doctor ! what can he do to a poor 
dying creature? Oh, Lord bless you, it’s 
none of them things I’m thinking of ; it’s my 
soul — my soul ! ” 

“ But my poor good woman,” said Mr. 
Proctor, “ though it is very good and praise- 
worthy of you to be anxious about your soul, 
let us hope that there is no such — no such 
haste as you seem to suppose.” jj 

The patient opened her eyes wide, and 
stared, with the anxious look of disease, in 
his face. 

“ I mean,” said the good man, faltering 
under that gaze, “ that I see no reason for 
your making yourself so very anxious. Let 
us hope it is not so bad as that. You are 
very ill, but not so ill— I suppose.” 

Here the rector was interrupted by a groan i 
from the patient, and by a troubled, disap- ■ 
proving, disappointed look from Lucy Wode- 
house. This brought him to a sudden stand- ' 
still. He gazed for a moment helplessly at i 
the poor woman in the bed. If he had known j 
any thing in the world W'hicli would have 
given her consolation, he W'as ready to have i 
made any exertion for it; but he knew' 
nothing to say — no medicine for a mind dis- 
eased was in his repositories. He was deeply 
distressed to see the disappointment w'hich 
followed his words, but his distress only 
made him more silent, more helpless, more' 
inefficient than before. 

After an interval which was disturbed only, 
by the groans of the patient and the uneasy' 
fidgeting of good Miss Wodehouse in her 
corner, the rector again broke silence. The 
sick woman had turned to the wall, and 
closed her eyes in dismay and disappoint- 
ment — evidently she had ceased to expect 
any thing from him. j 

“ If there is any thing I can do,” said poor! 
Mr. Proctor. “ I am afraid I have spoken 
hastily. I meant to try to calm her mind a 
little ; if I can be of any use ? ” 

“Ah, maybe I’m hasty,” said the dying 
woman, turning round again wdth a sudden | 
effort — “ but, oh, to speak to me of having! 


THE RECTOR. 29 


time when I’ve one foot in the grave al- 
ready ! ” 

“ Not so bad as that — not so bad as that,” 
said the rector soothingly. 

“ But I tell you it is as bad as that,” she 
cri^, with the brief blaze of anger common 
to great weakness. “ I’m not a child to be 
persuaded different from what I know. If 
you’d tell me — if you’d say a prayer — ah. 
Miss Lucy, it’s coming on again.” 

In a moment Lucy had raised the poor 
creature in her arms, and in default of the 
pillows which were not at hand, had risen 
herself into their place, and supported the 
gasping woman against her ov/n breast. It 
was a paroxysm dreadful to behold, in which 
every laboring breath seemed the last. The 
rector sat like one struck dumb, looking on 
at that mortal struggle. Miss Wodehouse 
approached nervously from behind, and went 
up to the bedside, faltering forth questions 
as to what she could do. Lucy only waved 
her hand, as her own light figure swayed and 
changed, always seeking the easiest attitude 
for the sufferer. As the elder sister drew 
back, the rector and she glanced at each 
other with wistful mutual looks of sympathy. 
Both were equally well-disposed, equally 
helpless and embarrassed. How to be of 
any use in that dreadful agony of nature was 
denied to both. They stood looking on, 
awed and self-reproaching. Such scenes 
have doubtless happened in sick-rooms be- 
fore now. 

When the fit was over, a hasty step came 
up the staar, and Mr. Wentworth entered 
the room. He explained in a whisper that 
he had not been at home when the messen- 
ger came, but had followed whenever he 
heard of the message. Seeing the rector, 
he hesitated, and drew back with some sur- 
prise, and, even (for he was far from perfect) 
in that chamber, a little flush of ofience. The 
rector rose abruptly, waving his hand, and 
went to join Miss Wodehouse in her corner. 
There the two elderly spectators looked on 
silent at ministrations of which both Avere 
incapable; one watching Avith Avondering yet 
affectionate envy how Lucy laid down the 
Aveakened but relieved patient upon her pil- 
loAvs ; and one beholding Avith a surprise he 
could not conceal, hoAv a young man, not 
half his own age, Avent softly, Avith all the 
confidence yet aAve of nature, into those mys- 
teries Avhich he dared not touch upon. The 


two young creatures by the deathbed ac- 
knowledged that their patient AA'as djing; 
the woman stood by her watchful and affec- 
tionate — the man held up before her that 
cross, not of wood or metal, but of truth and 
everlasting verity, which is the only hope of 
man. The spectators looked on, and did not 
interrupt — looked on, awed and wondering 
— unaware of how it was, but watching as if 
it Avere a miracle wrought before their eyes. 
Perhaps all the years of his life had not 
taught the rector so much as did that half- 
hour in an unknown poor bed-chamber, 
where, honest and humble, he stood aside, 
and, kneeling down, responded to his young 
brother’s prayer. His young brother — young 
enough to have been his son — not half nor 
a quarter part so learned as he ; but a Avorld 
further on in that profession which they 
shared — the art of winning souls. , 

When those prayers Avere over, the rector 
without a Avord to anybody, stole quietly 
away. When he got into the street, hoAv- 
ever, he found himself closely folloAved by 
Miss Wodehouse, of whom he was not at 
this moment afraid. That good creature 
was crying softly under her veil. She AA'as 
eager to make up to him, to open out her 
full heart ; and indeed the rector, like her- 
self, in that Avonderful sensation of surprised 
and unenv^ing discomfiture, was glad at that 
moment of sympathy too. 

“O Mr. Proctoi-, isn’t it wonderful?” 
sighed good Miss Wodehouse. 

The rector did not speak, but he answered 
by a very emphatic nod of his head. 

“ It did not used to be so when you and I 
were young,” said his companion in failure. 
“ I sometimes take a little comfort from that ; 
but no doubt, if it had been in me, it Avould 
have shown itself somehoAV. Ah, I fear, I 
fear, I Avas not well brought up ; but, to be 
sure, that dear child has not been brought 
up at all, if one may say so. Her poor 
mother died Avhen she Avas born. And oh. 
I’m afraid I never was kind to Lucy’s mother, 
Mr. Proctor. You know she was only a year 
or two older than I was ; and to think of that 
child, that baby ! What a Avorld she is, and 
always AA^as, before me that might have been 
her mother, Mr. Proctor ! ” said Miss Wode- 
house, Avith a little sob. 

“But things Avere different in our young 
days,” said the rector, repeating her senti- 
ment, Avithout inquiring Avhether it were true 


30 the rector. 


or not, and finding a certain vague consola- 
tion in it. 

“ Ah, that is true,” said Miss Wodehouse 
— “ that is true ; what a blessing things are 
so changed ; and these blessed young crea- 
tures,” she added softly, with tears falling 
out of her gentle old eyes — “ these blessed 
young creatures are near the Fountain- 
head.” 

With this speech Miss Wodehouse held 
out her hand to the rector, and they parted 
with a warm mutual grasp. The rector went 
straight home — straight to his study, where 
he shut himself in, and was not to be dis- 
turbed ; that night was one long to be re- 
membered in the good man’s history. For 
the first time in his life he set himself to in- 
quire what was his supposed business in 
this world. His treatises on the Greek verb, 
and his new edition of Sophocles, were 
highly creditable to the Fellow of All-Souls ; 
but how about the rector of Carlingford? 
What was he doing here, among that little 
world of human creatures who were dying, 
being born, perishing, suffering, falling into 
misfortune and anguish, and all manner 
of human vicissitudes, every day ? Young 
Wentworth knew what to say to that woman 
in her distress ; and so might the rector, had 
her distress concerned a disputed transla- 
tion, or a disused idiom. The good man was 
startled in his composure and calm. To-day 
he had visibly failed in a duty which even in 
All-Souls was certainly known to be one of 
the duties of a Christian priest. Was he a 
Christian priest, or what was he ? He was 
troubled to the very depths of his soul. To 
hold an office the duties of which he could 
not perform, was clearly impossible. The 
only question, and that a hard one, was, 
whether he could learn to discharge those 
duties, or whether he must cease to be rec- 
tor of Carlingford. He labored over this 
problem in his solitude, and could find no 
answer. “Things were different when we 
were young,” was the only thought that was 
any comfort to him, and that was poor con- 
solation. 

For one thing, it is hard upon the most 
magnanimous of men to confess that he has 
undertaken an office for which he has not 
found himself capable. Magnanimity was 
perhaps too lofty a word to apply to the rec- 
tor ; but he w'as honest to the bottom of his 
soul. As soon as he became aware of what 


was included in the duties of his office, he 
must perform them, or quit his post. But how- 
to perform them ? Can one learn to convey 
consolation to the dying, to teach the igno- 
rant, to comfort the sorrowful ? Are these 
matters to be acquired by study, like Greek 
verbs or intricate measures? The rector’s 
heart said No. The rector’s imagination 
unfolded before him, in all its halcyon bless- ' 
edness, that ancient paradise of All-Souls, S 
where no such confounding demands ever ‘ 
disturbed his beatitude. The good man 
groaned within himself over the mortifica- 
tion, the labor, the sorrow, which this living 
was bringing upon him. “ If I had but let 
it pass to Morgan, who wanted to marry,” 
he said with self-reproach; and then sud- 
denly bethought himself of his own most in- 
nocent filial romance, and the pleasure his 
mother had taken in her new house and new 
beginning life. At that touch the tide flowed ' 
back again. Could he dismiss her now to i 
another solitary cottage in Devonshire, her | 
old home there being all dispersed and 
broken up, while the house she had hoped 
to die in cast her out from its long-hoped-for 
shelter ? The rector was quite overwhelmed 
by this new aggravation. If by any effort of j 
his own, any sacrifice to himself, he could , 
preserve this bright new home to his mother, i 
would he shrink from that labor of love ? I 
Nobody, however, knew any tiling about 
those conflicting thoughts which rent his 
sober bosom. He preached next Sunday as 
usual, letting no trace of the distressed, wist- 
ful anxiety to do his duty which now pos- 
sessed him gleam into his sermon. He looked 
down upon a crowd of unsympathetic, unin- 
terested faces, when he delivered that smooth 
little sermon, which nobody cared much 
about, and which disturbed nobody. The 
only eyes which in the smallest degree com- 
prehended him were those of good Miss 
Wodehouse, who had been the witness and 
the participator of his humiliation. Lucy 
was not there. Doubtless Lucy was at St. 
Boque’s, where the sermons of the perpetual 
curate differed much from those of the rec- 
tor of Carlingford. Ah me ! the rectorship, 
with all its responsibilities, was a serious 
business ; and what was to come of it yet, 
Mr. Proctor could not see. He was not a 
hasty man — he determined to wait and see 
what events might make of it ; to consider 
it ripely—to take full counsel with himself. 


the rector. 31 


Every time he came out of his mother’s pres- 
ence, he came affected and full of anxiety to 
preserve to her that home which pleased her 
so much. She was the strong point in favor 
of Carlingford ; and it was no small tribute 
to^e good man’s filial affection, that for her 
• chiefly he kept his neck under the yoke of a 
service to which he knew himself unequal, 
and, sighing, turned his back upon his be- 
loved cloisters. If there had been no other 
sick-beds immediately in Carlingford, Mrs. 
Proctor w'ould have won the day. 

CHAPTER IV. 

Such a blessed exemption, however, was 
not to be hoped for. When the rector was 
solemnly sent for from his very study to visit 
^ a poor man who was not expected to live 
I many days, he put his -prayer-book under 
I his arm, and went off doggedly, feeling that 
' now was the crisis. He -went through it in 
I as exemplary a manner as could have been 
' desired, but it was dreadful work to the rec- 
i tor. If nobody else suspected him, he sus- 
i pected himself. He had no spontaneous 
' word of encouragement or consolation to 
offer ; he went through it as his duty with a 
! horrible abstractness. That night he went 
home disgusted beyond all possible power of 
self-reconciliation. He could not continue 
' this. Good evangelical Mr. Bury, who went 
before him, and by nature loved preaching, 
had accustomed the people to much of such 
visitations. It was murder to the Fellow of 
All-Souls. 

That night Mr. Proctor wrote a long let- 
ter to his dear cheery old mother, disclosing 
all his heart to her. It was written with a 
pathos of which the good man was wholly 
unconscious, and finished by asking her ad- 
vice and her prayers. He sent it up to her 
next morning on her breakfast-tray, which 
he always furnished with his own hands, and 
went out to occupy himself in paying visits 
till it should be time to see her, and ascertain 
her opinion. At Mr. Wodehouse’s there was 
: nobody at home but Lucy, who was very 
i friendly, and took no notice of that sad en- 
counter which had changed his views so en- 
tirely. The rector found, on inquiry, that 
the woman w'as dead, but not until Mr. 
Wentworth had administered to her fully 
the consolations of the Church. Lucy did 
not look superior, or say any thing in admi- 
ration of Mr. Wentworth, but the rector’s 


conscience supplied all that was wanting. 
If good Miss Wodehouse had been there 
with her charitable looks, and her disefii- 
ciency so like his own, it would have been a 
consolation to the good man. He would 
have turned joyfully from Lucy and her , 
blue ribbons to that distressed dove-colored ’ 
woman, so greatly had recent events changed . 
him. But the truth was, he cared nothing ' 
for either of them now-a-days. He was de- 
livered from those whimsical, distressing 
fears. Something more serious had obliter- 
ated those lighter apprehensions. He had 
no leisure now to think that somebody had 
planned to marry him ; all his thoughts were 
fixed on matters so much more important 
that this was entirely forgotten. 

Mrs. Proctor was seated as usual in the 
place she loved, with her newspapers, her 
books, her work-basket, and silver-headed 
cane at the side of her chair. The old lady, 
like her son, looked serious. She beckoned 
him to quicken his steps when she saw him 
appear at the drawing-room door, and point- 
ed to the chair placed beside her, all ready 
for this solemn conference. He came in 
with a troubled face, scarcely venturing to 
look at her, afraid to see the disappointment 
which he had brought upon his dearest 
friend. The old lady divined why it was he 
did not lift his eyes. She took his hand and 
addressed him with all her characteristic vi- 
vacity. 

“ Morley, what is this you mean, my dear? 
When did I ever give my son reason to dis- 
trust me ? Do you think I would suffer you 
to continue in a position painful to yourself 
for my sake ? How dare you think such a 
thing of me, Morley ? Don’t say so ; you 
didn’t mean it ! I can see it in your eyes.” 

The rector shook his head, and dropped 
into the chair placed ready for him. He 
might have had a great deal to say for him- 
self could she have heard him. But as it 
was, he could not shout all his reasons and 
apologies into her deaf ear. 

“ As for the change to me,” said the old 
lady, instinctively seizing upon the heart of 
the difficulty, “that’s nothing — simply noth- 
ing. I’ve not had time to get attached to Car- 
lingford. I’ve no associations with the place. 
Of course I shall be very glad to go back to 
all my old friends. Put that out of the ques- 
tion, Morley.” 

But the rector only shook his head once 


THE RECTOR. 


00 

more. The more she made light of it, the 
more he perceived all the painful circum- 
stances involved. Could his mother go 
back to Devonshire and tell all her old ladies 
that her son had made a failure in Carling- 
ford? He grieved within himself at the 
thought. His brethren at All-Souls might 
understand him ; but what could console the 
brave old woman for. all the condolence and 
commiseration to which she would be sub- 
ject ? “ It goes to my heart, mother,” he 
cried in her ear. 

“ Well, Morley, I am very sorry you find 
it so,” said the old lady ; “ very sorry you 
can’t see your way to all your duties. They 
tell me the late rector was very Low Church, 
and visited about like a Dissenter, so it is 
not much wonder you, wdth your differ- 
ent habits, find yourself a good deal put 
out ; but, my dear, don’t you think it’s only 
at first ? Don’t you think after awhile the 
people would get into your ways, and you 
into theirs ? Miss Wodehouse was here this 
morning, and was telling me a good deal 
about the late rector. It’s to be expected 
you should find the difference ; but by and 
by, to be sure, you might get used to it, and 
the people would not expect so much.” 

“ Did she tell you where we met the other 
day ? ” asked the rector, with a brevity ren- 
dered necessary by Mrs. Proctor’s infirmity. 

“ She told me — she’s a dear confused good 
soul,” said the old lady — “ about the differ- 
ence between Lucy and herself, and how the 
young creature was twenty times handier 
than she, and something about young Mr. 
Wentworth of St. Roque’s. Really, by all 

1 hear, that must be a very presuming young 
man,” cried Mrs. Proctor, with a lively air 
of offence. “ His interference among your 
parishioners, Morley, is really more than I 
should be inclined to bear.” 

Once more the good rector shook his head. 
He had not thought of that aspect of the 
subject. He was, indeed, so free from van- 
ity or self-importance, that his only feeling 
in regard to the sudden appearance of the 
perpetual curate was respect and surprise. 
He would not be convinced otherwise even 
now. “ He can do his duty, mother,” he an- 
swered, sadly. 

“ Stuff and nonsense ! ” cried the old lady, 
“ Do you mean to tell me a boy like that can 
do his duty better than my son could do it, 
if he put his mind to it ? And if it is your 


duty, Morley dear,” continued his mother, 
melting a little, and in a coaxing, persua- 
sive tone, “ of course I know you will do 
it, however hard it may be.” 

“That’s just the difficulty,” cried the rec- 
tor, venturing on a longer speech than usual, 
and roused to a point at which he had no 
fear of the listeners in the kitchen ; “ such 
duties require other training than mine has 
been. I can’t ! — do you hear me, mother ? 

— and I must not hold a false position ; that’s 
impossible.” 

. “You sha’n’t hold a false position,” cried 
the old lady ; “ that’s the only thing that is 
impossible — but, Morley, let us consider, 
dear. You are a clergyman, you know ; you 
ought to understand all that’s required of 
you a great deal better than these people do. 
My dear, your poor father and I trained you 
up to be a clergyman,” said Mrs. Proctor, 
rather pathetically, “ and not to be a Fellow 
of All-Souls.” 

The rector groaned. Had it not been ad- 
vancement, progress, unhoped-for good for- 
tune, that made him a member of that | 
learned corporation? He shook his head. 
Nothing could change the fact now. After 
fifteen years’ experience of that Elysium, he ' 
could not put on the cassock and surplice 
with all his youthful fervor. He had set- 
tied into his life-habits long ago. With the 
quick perception which made up for her de- 
ficiency, his mother read his face, and saw i 
the cause w’as hopeless; yet with female ! 
courage and pertinacity made one effort ' 
more. 

“ And with an excellent, hard-working cu- ! 
rate,” said the old lady — “ a curate whom, I 
of course, we’d do our duty by, Morley, and i 
who could take a great deal of the responsi- j 
bility off your hands ; for Mr. Vincent though j 
a nice young man, is not, I know, the man i 
yo2nvould have chosen for such a post; and j 
still more, my dear son — we were talking of i 
it in jest not long ago, but it is perfect ear- 
nest, and a most important matter — with a 
good wife, Morley ; a wife who would enter 
into all the parish w^ork, and give you useful 
hints, and conduct herself as a clergyman’s 
wife should — with such a wife — ” 

“ Lucy Wodehouse ! ” cried the rector, 
starting to his feet, and forgetting all his 
proprieties ; “ I tell you the thing is impos- 
sible. I’ll go back to All-Souls.” 

He sat down again, doggedly, having said 


THE RECTOR. 33 


it. His mother sat looking at him in silence, 
with tears in her lively old eyes. She was 
saying within herself that she had seen his 
father tak^just such a “ turn,” and that it 
was no us,e arguing with them under such 
circirfiistances. She watched him, as women 
often do watch men, waiting till the crea- 
ture should come to itself again and might 
be spoken to. The incomprehensibleness of 
■women is an old theory, but what is that 
to the curious, wondering observation with 
W'hich wives, mothers, and sisters watch the 
other unreasoning animal in those moments 
when he has snatched the reins out of their 
hands, and is not to be spoken to ! What 
he will make of it in those unassisted mo- 
ments afflicts the compassionate female un- 
derstanding. It is best to let him come to, 
and feel his own helplessness. Such was 
Mrs. Proctor’s conclusion, as, vexed, dis- 
tressed, and helpless, she leant back in her 
chair, and wiped a few tears of disappoint- 
ment and vexation out of her bright old 
eyes. 

The rector saw this movement, and it once 
more excited him to speech. “But you 
shall have a house in Oxford, mother,” he 
cried— •“ you sha’n’t go back to Devonshire 
— where I can see you every day, and you 
can hear all that is going on, Bravo ! that 
•adll be a thousand times better than Carling- 
ford.” 

It was now Mrs. Proctor’s turn to jump 
up, startled, and put her hand on his mouth 
and point to the door. The rector did not 
care for the door ; he had disclosed his sen- 
timents, he had taken his resolution, and 
now the sooner all was over the better for 
the emancipated man. 

Thus concluded the brief incumbency of 
the Reverend Morley Proctor. When he 
returned to Oxford everybody was glad to 
see him, and he left Carlingford with univer- 
sal good wishes. The living fell to Morgan, 
who wanted to be married, and whose turn 
was much more to be a working clergyman 
than a classical commentator. Old Mrs. 
Proctor got a pretty house under shelter of 
the trees of St. Giles’, and half the under- 
graduates fell in love with the old lady in 
the freshness of her second lifetime. Car- 
lingford passed away like a dream from the 
CilltONICLES OF CAHLINGFOED. 


lively old mother’s memory, and how could 
any reminiscences of that uncongenial local- 
ity disturb the recovered beatitude of the 
Fellow of All-Souls ? . 

Yet all was not so satisfactory as it ap- 
peared. Mr. Proctor paid for his temporary 
absence. All-Souls was not the Elysium it 
had been before that brief, disastrous voy- 
age into the world. The good man felt the 
stings of failure ; he felt the mild jokes of 
his brethren in those Elysian fields. He 
could not help conjuring up to himself vis- 
ions of Morgan with his new wife in that 
pretty rectory. Life, after all, did not con- 
sist of books, nor were Greek verbs essen- 
tial to happiness. The strong emotion into 
which his own failure had roused him — the 
wondering silence in which he stood looking 
at the ministrations of Lucy Wodehouse and 
the young curate — the tearful, sympathetic 
woman as helpless as himself, who had stood 
beside him in that sick-chamber, came back 
upon his recollection strangely, amidst the 
repose, not so blessed as heretofore, of All- 
Souls. The good man had found out that 
secret of discontent "wfflich most men find out 
a great deal earlier than he. Something 
better, though it might be sadder, harder, 
more calamitous, was in this world. Was 
there ever human creature yet that had not 
something in him more congenial to the 
thorns and briers outside to be conquered, 
than to that mild paradise for which our pri- 
meval mother disqualified all her children? 
When he went back to his dear cloisters, 
good Mr. Proctor felt that sting : a longing 
for the work he had rejected stirred in him 
— a wistful recollection of the sympathy he 
had not sought. 

And if in future years any traveller, if 
travellers still fall upon adventures, should 
light upon a remote parsonage in which an 
elderly, embarrassed rector, with a mild wife 
in dove-colored dresses, toils painfully after 
his duty, more and more giving his heart to 
it, more and more finding difficult expres- 
sion for the unused faculty, let him be sure 
that it is the late rector of Carlingford, self- 
expelled out of the uneasy paradise, setting 
forth untimely, yet not too late, into the la- 
borious world. 

3 


34 


CHRONICLES 

CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD ; THE 
DOCTOR’S FAMILY. 

CHAPTER I. 

Young Dr. Rider lived in the new quar- 
ter of Carlingford : had he aimed at a repu- 
tation in society, he could not possibly have 
done a more foolish thing; but such was 
not his leading motive. The young man, 
being but young, aimed at a practice. He 
was not particular in the mean time as to 
the streets in which his patients dwelt. A 
new house, gazing with all its windows over 
a brick field, was as interesting to the young 
surgeon as if it had been one of those exclu- 
sive houses in Grange Lane, where the aris- 
tocracy of Carlingford lived retired within 
their garden walls. His own establishment, 
though sufficiently comfortable, was of a 
kind utterly to shock* the feelings of the re- 
fined community. A corner house, with a 
surgery round the corner, throwing the gleam 
of its red lamp over all that chaotic district 
of half-formed streets’ and full-developed 
brick fields, with its night-bell prominent, 
and young Rider’s name on a staring brass 
plate, with mysterious initials after it. 
M.R.C.S. the unhappy young man had been 
seduced to put after his name upon that 
brass plate, though he was really Dr. Rider, 
a physician, if not an experienced one. 
Friends had advised him that in such dis- 
tricts people were afraid of physicians, asso- 
ciating only with dread adumbrations of a 
guinea a visit that mis-comprehended name ; 
so, with a pang, the young surgeon had put 
his degree in his pocket, and put up with 
the inferior distinction. Of course. Dr. 
Majoribanks had all the patronage of Grange 
Lane. The great people were infatuated 
about that snuflfy old Scotchman — a man be- 
hind his day, who had rusted and grown old 
among the soft diseases of Carlingford, where 
sharp practice was so seldom necessary ; and 
no opening appeared for young Rider except 
in the new district, in the smug corner house, 
with the surgery and the red lamp, and 
M.R.C.S. on a brass plate on his door. 

If you can imagine that the young man 
bowed his spirit to do this without a strug- 
gle, you do the poor young fellow injustice. 
He had been hard enough put to it at divers 
periods of his life. Ambition had not been 
possible for him either in one shape or an- 
other. Some people said he had a vulgar 


OF CARLINGFORD. 

mind when he subsided into that house; 
other people declared him a shabljy fellow 
when he found out, after the hardest night’s 
thought he ever went through in his life, 
that he durst not ask Bessie Christian to 
marry him. You don’t suppose that he did 
not know in his secret heart, and feel tin- 
gling through every vein, those words which i 
nobody ever said to his face ? But he could 
not help it. He could only make an indig- 
nant gulp of his resentment and shame, | 
which were shame and resentment at him- 
self for wanting the courage to dare every 
thing, as well as at other people for finding 
him out, and go on with his work as he best 
could. He was not a hero nor a martyr; 
men made of that stuff have large compen- . i 
sations. He was an ordinary individual, , 
with no sublimity in him, and no compensa- 
tion to speak of for his sufferings — no con- I 
sciousness of lofty right-doing, or of a course 
of action superior to the world. ; 

Perhaps you would prefer to go up-stairs 
and see for yourself what was the skeleton i 
in Edward Rider’s cupboard, rather than i 
have it described to you. His drag came to | 
the door an hour ago, and he went off with i 
care sitting behind him, and a certain angry 
pang aching in his heart, which perhaps Bes- I 
sie Christian’s wedding-veil, seen far off in | 
church yesterday, might have something to i 
do with. His looks were rather black as • 
he twitched the reins out of his little groom’s ! 
hands, and went off at a startling pace, { 
which was almost the only consolation the ( 
young fellow had. Now that he is certainly i 
gone, and the coast clear, we may go up- i 
stairs. It is true he all but kicked the cu- * 
rate down for taking a similar liberty, but ' 
we who are less visible may venture while , 
he is away. j 

This skeleton is not in a cupboard. It ie 
in an up-stairs room, comfortable enough, j 
but heated, close, unwholesome — a place j 
from which, even when the window is open, 
the fresh air seems shut out. There is no 
fresh air nor current of life in this stifling 
place. There is a fire, though it is not cold 
— a sofa near the fire — a sickening heavy 
smell of abiding tobacco — not light whiffs 
of smoke, such as accompany a man’s labors, 
but a dead pall of idle heavy vapor ; and in 
the midst of all a man stretched lazily on 
the sofa, with his pipe laid on the table be- 
side him, and a book in his soft, boneless, 


CHRONICLES OF 

nerveless hands. A large man, interpene- 
trated wtth smoke and idleness and a certain 
dreary sodden dissipation, heated yet un- 
excited, reading a novel he has read half a 
dozen tlfRes before. He turns his bemused 
eyes to the door when his invisible visitors 
enter. He fancies he hears some one com- 
ing, but will not take the trouble to rise and 
see who is there — so, instead of that exer- 
tion, he takes up his pipe, knocks the ashes 
out of it upon his book, fills it with coarse 
tobacco, and stretches his long arm over the 
shoulder of the sofa for a light. His feet 
are in slippers, his person clothed in a greasy 
old coat, his linen soiled and untidy. That 
is the skeleton in young Rider’s house. 

The servants, you may be sure, knew all 
about this unwelcome visitor. They went 
with bottles and jugs secretly to bring him 
what he wanted ; they went to the circulat- 
ing library for him ; they let him in when 
he had been out in the twilight all shabby 
and slovenly. They would not be human if 
they did not talk about him. They say he 
is very good-natured, poor gentleman — al- 
•ways has a pleasant word — ^is nobody’s en- 
emy but his own ; and to see how the doc- 
tor do look at him, and he his own brother 
as was brought up with him, is dreadful, to 
be sure. 

All this young Rider takes silently, never 
saying a word about it to any human -crea- 
ture. He seems to know by intuition what 
all these people say of him, as he drives 
1 1 about furiously in his drag from patient to 
patient; and wherever he goes, as plain, 
nay, far more distinctly than the actual pros- 
pect before him, he sees that sofa, that dusty 
slow-burning fire — that pipe, with the little 
heap of ashes knocked out of it upon the 
table— that wasted ruined life chafing him 
to desperation with its dismal content. It 
is very true that it would have been sadly 
imprudent of the young man to go to the 
little house in Grove Street a year ago, and 
tell Bessie Christian he was very fond of her, 
and that somehow for her love he would man- 
age to provide for those old people whom 
that cheerful little woman toiled to main- 
tain. It was a thing not to be done in any 
way you could contemplate it ; and with a 
heartache the poor young doctor had turned 
his horse’s head away from Grove Street, 
and left Bessie to toil on in her poverty. 
Bessie had escaped all that now-a-days ; but 


CARLINGFORD. 35 

who could have forewarned the poor doctor 
that his elder brother, once the hope of the 
family — that clever Fred, whom all the oth- 
ers had been postponed to — he who with his 
evil reputation had driven poor Edward out 
of his first practice, and sent him to begin, 
life a second time at Carlingford — was to 
drop listlessly in again, and lay a harder 
burden than a harmless old father-in-law 
upon the young man’s hands — a burden 
which no grateful Bessie shared and sweet- 
ened? No wonder black care sat at the 
young doctor’s back as he drove at that dan- 
gerous pace through the new, encumbered 
streets. He might have broken his neck 
over those heaps of brick and mortar, and 
it is doubtful whether he would have greatly 
cared. 

• When Dr. Rider weijt home that night, 
the first sight he saw w'hen he pulled up at 
his own door was his brother’s large, indo- 
lent, shabby figure prowling up the street. 
In the temper he was in then, this was not 
likely to soothe him. It was not a much 
frequented street, but the young doctor knew 
instinctively that his visitor had been away 
in the heart of the town at the booksellers’ 
shops buying cheap novels, and ordering 
them magnificently to be sent to Dr. Rider’s ; 
and could guess the curious questions and 
large answers which had followed. He 
sprang to the ground with a painful sup- 
pressed indignation, intensified by many 
mingled feelings, and waited the arrival of 
the maudlin wanderer. Ah mo ! one might 
have had some consolation in the burden 
freely undertaken for love’s sake, and by 
love’s self shared and lightened : but this load 
of disgrace and ruin wliich nobody could take 
part of — which it was misery so much as to 
think that anybody knew of— the doctor’s fra- 
ternal sentiments, blunted by absence and in- 
jury, were not strong enough to bear that 
weight. 

“So, Fred, you have been out,” said Dr. 
Rider, moodily, as he stood aside on his own 
threshold to let his brother pass in — not 
with the courtesy of a host, but the precau- 
tion of a jailer, to see him safe before he 
himself entered and closed the door. 

“ Yes, you can’t expect a man to sit in 
the house forever,” said the prodigal, stum- 
bling in to his brother’s favorite sitting- 
room, where every thing was tidy and com- 
fortable for the brief leisure of the hard- 


36 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


working man. The man who did no work 
threw himself heavily into the doctor’s easy- 
chair, and rolled his bemused eyes round 
upon his brother’s household gods. Those 
book-shelves with a bust at either corner, 
those red curtains drawn across the window, 
those prints on the walls — all once so pleas- 
ant to the doctor’s eyes — took a certain air 
of squalor and wretchedness to-night which 
sickened him to look at. The lamp flared 
wildly with an untrimmed wick, or at least 
Dr. Rider thought so ; and threw a hideous 
profile of the intruder upon the wall behind 
him. The hearth was cold, with that chill, 
of sentiment rather than reality, naturally 
belonging to a summer night. Instead of 
a familiar place where rest and tranquillity 
awaited him, that room, the only vision of 
home which the poor young fellow possessed, 
hardened into four walls, and so many chairs 
and tables in the doctor’s troubled eyes. 

But it bore a different aspect in the eyes 
of his maudlin brother. Looking round 
with those bewildered orbs, all this appeared 
luxury to the wanderer. Mentally he ap- 
praised the prints over the mantle-shelf, and 
reckoned how much of Tiis luxuries might be 
purchased out of them. That was all so 
much money wasted by the Crcesus before 
him. What a mint of money the fellow 
must be making ! and grudged a little com- 
fort to his brother, his elder brother, the 
cleverest of the family ! The dull exaspera- 
tion of selfishness woke in the mind of the 
self-ruined man. 

“ You’re snug enough here,” he exclaimed, 
“ though you shut me in up-stairs to burrow 
out of sight. By Jove ! as if I were not good 
enough to face your Carlingford patients. 
I’ve had a better practice in my day than 
ever you’ll see, my fine fellow, with your 
beggarily M.R.C.S. And you’d have me 
shut myself in my garret into the bargain ! 
You’re ashamed of me, forsooth ! You can 
go spending money on that rubbish there, 
and can’t pay a tailor’s bill for your elder 
brother ; and as for introducing me in this 
wretched hole of a place, and letting me pick 
up a little money for myself— I, a man with 
twice the experience in the profession that 
you have — ” 

“ Fred, stop that,” cried the doctor — “ I’ve 
had about enough. Look here. I can’t 
deny you shelter and what you call necessa- 
ries, because you’re my brother, but I wont 


sjibmit to be ruined a second time by any 
man. If I am ever to do any good in this 
world — and whether I do any good or not,” he 
added fiercely, “ I’ll not have my good name 
tarnished and my work interfered with again. 
I don’t care tw'o straws for my life. It’s hard 
enough — as hard as a treadmill, and never a 
drop of consolation in the cup ; though I 
might have had that if I had been any thing 
but a fool. But look here, I do care for my 
practice — I w^ont have you put your con- 
founded spoke in my wheel again. Keep 
on in your own way ; smoke and drink and 
dream if you will ; but I’ll stand no inter- 
ference with my work — and that I tell you 
once for all.” 

This speech was uttered with great vehe- 
mence, the speaker walking up and down 
the room all the while. The bitterness of 
ingratitude and malice had entered into the 
young man’s soul. All the wrongs which 
the clever elder brother, to whose claims 
everybody else was subordinated, had done 
to his family, rose upon the recollection of 
the younger ; all the still bitterer sting of 
that injury which had been personal to him- 
self; all the burden and peril of this present 
undesired visit, the discontent, the threats, 
the evident power of doing evil, woke the 
temper and spirit of the young doctor. It 
W'as not Fred’s fault that his brother had 
made that mistake in life which he repented 
so bitterly. Bessie Christian’s bridal veil, 
and white ribbons; her joyful face untouched 
with any pensive reminiscences ; and the 
dead dulness of that house, into which foot 
of w'oman never entered, were not of Fred’s 
doing ; but passion is not reasonable. The 
doctor gave Fred credit unconsciously for 
the whole. He walked up and down the 
room with a whole world of passionate mor- 
tified feeling — vexation, almost despair, 
throbbing within him. He seemed to have 
made a vast sacrifice for the sake of this 
brother who scorned him to his face. 

“ You’re hot,” said the disreputable figure 
in Dr. Rider’s easy-chair, “ much hotter than 
there’s any occasion for. Do I envy you 
your beggarly patients, do you suppose ? 
But, Ned, you never were cut out for the 
profession— a good shopkeeping business 
would have been a deal better for you. 
Hang it ! you haven’t the notions of a gen- 
tleman. You think bread and water is all 
you’re bound to furnish your brother when 


CHRONICLES OF 

he’s under a cloud. As for society, I never 
see a soul — not even yourself, though you’re 
no great company. Look here— I am not 
unreasonable ; order in some supper — there’s 
a good fellow — and let’s have a comfortable 
evening together. You’re not the man you 
used to be, Ned. You used to be a fellow 
of spirit ; somebody’s jilted you, or some- 
thing — I don’t want to pry into your secrets ; 
but let’s have a little comfort for once in a 
way, and you shall have the whole business 
i about the old colony, and how I came to leave 
j it — the truth and nothing but the truth.” 
j It was some time before the vicUm yielded ; 

1 " at last, half to escape the painful ferment of 
j his own thoughts, and half with a natural 
! yearning for some sympathy and compan- 
i ionship, however uncongenial, he fell out of 
I his heat and passion into a more complacent 
i mood. He sat down, watching with a gulp 
j of hardly restrained disgust that lolling fig- 
j ure in the chair, every gesture of which was 
i the more distasteful for being so familiar, 
j and recalling a hundred preliminary scenes 
i all tending towards this total wreck and 
: shame. Then his mind softened with fra- 
: ternal instincts — strange interlacement of 
: loathing and affection. He was tired, hun- 
i gry, chilled to his heart. The spell of ma- 
I terial comfort, even in such company, came 
upon the young man. They supped to- 
; gether, not much to the advantage of Dr. 

I Rider’s head, stomach, or temper, on the 
I following morning. The elder told his story 
[ of inevitable failure, and strange unexplain- 
able fatality. The younger dropped forth 
expressions of disappointment and trouble 
which partly eased his own mind. Thus 
they spent together the unlovely evening ; 
and perhaps a few such nights would have 
done as much harm to the young doctor’s 
practice as had he introduced his disreputa- 
ble brother without more ado into the par- 
1 ticular little world of Carlingford. 

CHAPTER II. 

Next morning Dr. Rider rose mightily 
vexed with himself as was to be supposed, 
i He was half an hour late for breakfast ; he 
I had a headache, his hand shook, and his 
temper was “ awful.” Before he was dressed, 
ominous knocks came to the door; and all 
feverish and troubled as he was, you may 
imagine that the prospect of the day’s work 
before him did not improve his feelings, and 


CARLINGFORD. 37 

that self-reproach, direst of tormentors, did 
not mend the matter. Two ladies were wait- 
ing for him, he was told when he went down- 
stairs — not to say sundry notes and messages 
in the ordinary way of business — two ladies 
who had brought two boxes with them, and 
asked leave to put them in the hall till they 
could see Dr. Rider. The sight of this lug- 
gage in his little hall startled the doctor. 
Patients do not generally carry such things 
about with them. What did it mean ? What 
could two ladies want with him ? The young 
man felt his face burn with painful anticipa- 
tions, a little shame, and much impatience. 
Probably, the sister who adored Fred, and 
never could learn to believe that he was not 
unfortunate and a victim. This would be a 
climax to the occupation of his house. 

As the poor doctor gloomily approached 
the door of the room in which he had spent 
last evening, he heard a little rustle and 
commotion not quite consistent with his ex- 
pectations— a hum of voices and soft stir 
such as youthful womankind only makes. 
Then a voice entirely strange to him uttered 
an exclamation. Involuntarily he started 
and changed his aspect. He did not know 
the voice, but it was young, sweet, peculiar. 
The cloud lightened a little upon the doctor’s 
face. Notwithstanding Bessie Christian, he 
was still young enough to feel a little flutter 
of curiosity when he heard such a voice 
sounding out of his room. Hark ! what did 
she say ? It was a profoundly prosaic speech. 

“ What an intolerable smell of smoke ! I 
shouldn’t wonder a bit — indeed, I rather 
think he must be, or he wouldn’t live in a 
place like this — if he were exactly such 
another as Fred.” 

“ Poor Fred ! ” said a plaintive voice, “ if 
we only can learn where he is. Hush, there 
is a footstep ! Ah, it is not my poor fellow’s 
footstep ! Nettie, hark ! ” 

“ No, indeed ! twenty thousand times 
sharper, and more like a man,” said the 
other, in hurried breathless accents. “ Hark ! 
here he is.” 

The entire bewilderment, the amaze, ap- 
prehension, confusion, with which Dr. Rider 
entered the room from which this scrap of 
conversation reached him is indescribable. 
A dreadful sense that something was about 
to happen seized the young man’s mind with 
an indescribable curiosity. He paused an 
instant to recover himself, and then went 


38 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


boldly and silently into the room which had 
become mysterious through its new inmates. 
They both turned round upon him as he en- 
tered. Two young women: one who had 
been sitting at the table, looking faded, 
plaintive, and anxious, rose up suddenly, and, 
clasping her hands, as if in entreaty, fixed 
two bright but sunken eyes upon his face. 
The other, a younger, lighter figure, all ac- 
tion and haste, interposed between him and 
her companion. She put up one hand in 
warning to the petitioner behind her, and 
one to call the attention of the bewildered 
stranger before. Evidently the one thing 
which alarmed this young lady was that 
somebody would speak before her, and the 
conduct of the situation be taken out of her 
hands. She was little, very slight, very 
pretty, but the prettiness was peculiar. The 
young doctor, accustomed to the fair Saxon 
version of beauty given by Bessie Christian, 
did not at the first glance believe -that the 
wonderful little person before him possessed 
any ; for she was not only slender but thin, 
dark, eager, impetuous, with blazing black 
eyes and red lips, and nothing else notable 
about her. So he thought, gazing fasci- 
nated, yet not altogether attracted — scarcely 
sure that he was not repelled — unable, how- 
ever, to withdraw his eyes from that hurried, 
eager little figure. Nothing in the least 
like her had ever yet appeared before Dr. 
Rider’s eyes. 

“We want to inquire about your brother,” 
said the little stranger ; “ we know this was 
to be his address, and we want to know 
whether he is living here. His letters were 
to be sent to your care ; but my sister has 
not heard from him now for a year.” 

“ Never mind that ! — never mind telling 
that, Nettie,” cried the other behind her. “ O 
sir ! only tell me where my poor Fred is ? ” 

“ So she began to fear he was ill,” re- 
sumed the younger of the two undauntedly ; 
“ though Susan will do nothing but praise 
him, he has behaved to her very shamefully. 
Do you happen to know, sir, where he is ? ” 

“ Did you say Fred — my brother Fred ? ” 
cried the poor young doctor in utter dismay ; 
“ and may I ask who it is that expresses so 
much interest in him ? ” 

There was a momentary pause ; the two 
women exchanged looks. “ I told you so,” 
cried the eager little spokeswoman. “ He 


never has let his friends know; he was afraid 
of that. I told you how it was. This,” she 
continued W'ith a little tragic air, stretching 
out her arm to her sister, and facing the doc- 
tor — “ This is Mrs. Frederick Rider, or 
rather Mrs. Rider, I should say, as he is the 
eldest of the family ! Now will you please 
to tell us where he is ? ” 

The doctor made no immediate answer. 
He gazed past the speaker to the faded wo- I 
man behind, and exclaimed, with a kind of f 
groan, “ Fred’s wife ! ” | 

“ Yes, Fred’s wife,” cried the poor crea- j 
ture, rushing forward to him ; “ and ohl 
where is he ? I’ve come thousands of miles j 
to hear. Is he ill ? has any thing happened ! 
to him ? Where is Fred ? ” I 

“ Susan, you are not able to manage this ; 
leave it to me,” said her sister, drawing her 
back peremptorily. “ Dr. Rider, please to 
answer us. We know you well enough, | 
though you don’t seem ever to have heard 
of us. It was you that my brother-in-law 
gave up his business to before he came out 
to the colony. Oh, we know all about it ! 
To keep him separate from his wife cannot 
do you any benefit. Dr. Edward. Yes, I 
know your name and all about it ; and I 
don’t mean indeed to sufier my sister to be ! 
injured and kept from her husband. I have I 
come all this way with her to take care of | 
her. I mean to stay with her to take care 
of her. I have not parted with my money, ^ 
though she gave all hers away ; and I mean 
to see her have her rights.” 

“ O Nettie, Nettie, h^w you talk ! ” cried 
the unfortunate wife, “You keep him from 
answering me. All this time I cannot hear 
— where is Fred ? ” 

“ Be seated, please,” said the doctor, wdth 
dreadful civility, “ and compose yourselves. 
Fred is well enough ; as well as he ever is. 

I don’t know,” added poor Rider, with irre- 
strainable bitterness, “ whether he is quite 
presentable to ladies ; but Ipresume, madam, 
if you’re his wife, you’re acquainted wdth his I 
habits. Excuse me for being quite unpre- 
pared for such a visit. I have not much 
leisure for any thing out of my profession. 

I can scarcely spare these minutes that is the 
truth ; but if you will favor me with a few 
particulars I will have the news conveyed to 
my brother. I — I beg your pardon. "When 
a man finds he has new relations he never 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


dreamed of, it naturally embarrasses him at 
the moment. May I ask if you ladies have 
come fr^ Australia alone ? ” 

“ Oh, not alone; the childi:^n are at the 
hotel. Nettie said it was no use coming un- 
less we all came,” said his new sister-in-law, 
with a half-sob. 

“The children!” Dr. Rider’s gasp of 
dismay was silent, and made no sound. He 
stood staring blankly at those wonderful in- 
vaders of his bachelor house, marvelling 
what was to be done with them in the first 
place. Was he to bring Fred down all slov- 
enly and half-awakened ? was he to leave 
them in possession of his private sanctuary ? 
The precious morning moments w^ere pass- 
ing while he pondered, and his little groom 
fidgeted outside with a message for the doc- 
tor. While he stood irresolute, the inde- 
fatigable Nettie once more darted forward. 

“ Give me Fred’s address, please,” said 
this managing woman. “ I’ll see him and 
prepare him for meeting Susan. He can say 
what he pleases to me ; I don’t mind it in 
the very least ; but Susan of course must be 
taken care of. Now, look here. Dr. Edward, 
Susan is your sister-in-law, and I am her 
sister. We don’t want to occupy your time. 
I can manage every thing ; but it is quite 
necessary in the first place that you should 
confide in me.” 

“ Confide 1 ” cried the bewildered man. 
“ Fred is not under my authority. He is 
here in my house much against my will. He 
is in bed, and not fit to be awakened ; and 
I am obliged to tell you simply, ladies,” said 
the unfortunate doctor, “ that my house has 
no accommodation for a family. K you will 
go back to the hotel where you left the chil- 
(iren ” — and here the speaker gave another 
gasp of horror — “ I’ll have him roused and 
sent to you. It is the only thing I can do.” 

“ Susan can go,” said the prompt Nettie ; 
“ ni stay here until Fred is ready, and take 
him to see them. It is necessary he should 
be prepared, you know. Don’t talk non- 
sense, Susan— I shall stay here, and Dr. 
Rider, of course; will call a cab for ypu.” 

“ But Nettie, Nettie dear, it isn’t proper. 
I can’t leave you all by yourself in a strange 
house,” remonstrated her sister. 

“ Don’t talk such stuff ; I am perfectly 
well able to take care of myself ; I am not a 
London young lady,” said the courageous 
Nottie. “ It is perfectly unnecessary to say 


39 

another word to me — I know my duty — I 
shall stay here.” 

With w hich speech she seated herself res- 
olutely in that same easy-chair which Fred 
had lolled in last night, took off her bonnet, 
for hats were not in these days, and shed off 
from her face, with two tiny hands, exquisite 
in shape if a little brown in color, the great 
braids of dark brown silky hair which en- 
cumbered her little head. The gesture mol- 
lified Dr. Rider in the most unaccountable 
way in spite of himself. The intolerable 
idea of leaving these two in his house, be- 
came less intolerable, he could not tell how’. 
And the little groom outside fairly knocked 
at the door in that softening moment with a 
message which could be delayed no longer. 
The doctor put his head out to receive the 
call, and looked in again perplexed and un- 
certain. Nettie had quite established her- 
self in the easy-chair. She sat there looking 
with her bright eyes into the vacant air be- 
fore her, in a pretty attitude of determina- 
tion and readiness, beating' her little foot on 
the carpet. Something whimsical, odd, and 
embarrassing, about her position made it all 
the more piquant to the troubled eyes which, 
in spite of all their worldly wisdom, were 
still the eyes of a young man. He could not 
tell in the world what to say to her. To 
order that creature out of his house was 
simply impossible ; to remain there was 
equally so ; to leave them in possession of 
the field — what could the unfortunate young 
doctor do ? One thing was certain, the im- 
patient patient could no longer be neglected ; 
and after a few minutes longer of bewildered 
uncertainty Dr. Rider went off in the wild- 
est confusion of mind, leaving his brother’s 
unknown family triumphant in his invaded 
house. 

To describe the feelings with which the 
unfortunate doctor went fasting about his 
day’s work — the manner in which that scene 
returned to him after every visit he made — 
the continual succession in which wrath, dis- 
may, alarm, bitter disgust with the falsehood 
of the brother w’ho, no further gone than last 
night, had pretended to confide in him, but 
never breathed a syllable of this biggest un- 
concealable secret, swept through the mind 
of the victim ; all culminating, however, in 
the softening of that moment, in the tiny fig- 
ure, indomitable elf or fairy,- shedding back 
with dainty fingers those soft abundant locks 


40 CHRONICLES OF 

— would be impossible. The young man 
got through his work somehow, in a maze of 
confusion and excitement — angry excite- 
ment, indignant confusion, determination to 
yield nothing further, but to defend himself 
and his house once for all from the inroads 
of what he angrily pronounced in his own 
mind, “ another man’s family” — yet, withal, 
a curiosity and interest which gave zest 
greater than usual to the idea of going home. 
When he w’as able at last to turn his horse’s 
head towards his own dwelling, it was with 
feelings very different from the usual unex- 
pecting blank of sullen displeasure. What 
he should find there, was a curious, exciting, 
alarming question ; perhaps an entire nur- 
sery with Nettie in charge ; perhaps a recu- 
sant husband, with Nettie mounting guard 
over him ; perhaps a thrilling scene of fam- 
ily explanation and reconciliation. The day 
had been a specially long and hard one. He 
had been obliged to snatch a hurried lunch 
at one of his patient’s houses, and to post- 
pone his hard-earned dinner to the most fash- 
ionable of hours. It was indeed quite even- 
ing, almost twilight, when he made his way 
home at last. As he neared the scene of ac- 
tion, the tired man condoled with himself 
over the untimely excitement that awaited 
him. He said to himself with pathetic self- 
pity that it was hard indeed for a man who 
had earned a little repose to go in upon all 
the troubles of another man’s family. He 
had denied himself— he had not undertaken 
upon his own shoulders that pleasing bur- 
den ; and now what was he to be saddled 
with— the burden without the consolation— 
the responsibility without the companion- 
ship. All this Dr. Eider represented to 
himself very pathetically as he wended his 
homeward way. Yet it is astonishing, not- 
withstanding, with what alacrity he hastened 
upon that path, and how much the curiosity, 
the excitement, the dramatic stir and com- 
motion made in his monotonous life by this 
entirely new, unexpected incident, occupied 
his mind. With expectations highly roused, 
he drew up once more before his own house. 
It was surprising to him to see how exactly 
it looked like itself. The blinds half drawn 
down in the genteelest calm as they al- 
ways were — no faces peeping at the win- 
dows — no marks of an arrival on the pave- 
ment, or in the composed countenance of 
Mary, who stood holding the door open for 


CARLINGFORD. 

him. He went in with a little thrill of curi- 
osity ; the house w’as very quiet — dead-quiet 
in comparison with the commotion of his 
thoughts ; so was the sitting-room where he 
had left Nettie resolutely planted in the easy- 
chair ; there was nobody there now ; the 
boxes were out of the hall, not a sound was 
to be heard in the house. He turned rather 
blankly upon Mary, who was going away 
quite composedly, as if there was nothing 
which she w^anted to tell or he to hear. 

“ Where is my brother and the ladies ? ” 
said the amazed doctor. 

“ They all went off to the ’otel, sir, as soon 
as Mr. Eider came down-stairs,” said Mary, 
complacently. “ I assured Miss as it was 
the best thing she could do, sir, for that I 
was ’amost sure you’d never have the chil- 
dren here, — as to be sure there wasn’t no 
room neither,” said the doctor’s factotum. 
“ As soon as Mr. Frederick came dowm, she 
called a cab, did Miss, and took ’em both 
away.” 

“Oh! so they’re gone, are they?” said 
the doctor. 

“ Hours and hours ago,” answ’ered Mary; 
“dinner’ll bo up in two minutes. But I 
wouldn’t say much for the potatoes, sir. 
When a gentleman’s irreg’lar, its hard laws 
on the poor servants — nothink will keep, go- 
ing on for two hours, and not take no harm ; 
but all’s quiet and comfortable in your room.” 

And with this assurance, which she evi- 
dently thought a very grateful one, Mary 
went off to get the doctor’s dinner. He 
walked to the end of the room, and then 
back again, with solemnity — then threw him- 
self into that easy-chair. “Blessed rid- 
dance ! ” said the doctor ; but somehow he 
looked glum, wonderfully glum. There was 
no accounting for those blank looks of his ; 
he who had been condoling with himself over 
the exciting scene he expected, so uncom- 
fortable a conclusion to a long day’s labor, 
how w^as it he did not look relieved when that 
scene was spared him ? To tell the truth, 
when one has been expecting something to 
happen, of whatever description, and has 
been preparing one’s courage, one’s temper, 

one’s fortitude, in anticipatory rehearsals 

when one has placed one’s self in the attitude 
of a martyr, and prepared to meet with fiery 
trials— it is mortifying, to say the least, when 
one finds all the necessities of the case dis- 
appear, and the mildest calm replace that 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


tragical anticipation : the quiet falls blank 
upon the excited imagination. Of course, 
Dr. Bfder was relieved ; but it was with 
something mightily like disappointment that 
he leant back in his chair and knitted his 
brows at the opposite wall. Not for the 
world Tvould he have acknowledged himself 
to be disappointed ; but the calm was won- 
derfully monotonous after all those expecta- 
tions. He was never so bored and sick of 
a night by himself. He tried’ to read, but 
reading did not occupy his mind. He grew 
furious over his charred chops and sodden 
potatoes. As for the tea Mary brought, he 
would have gladly pitched it at her by way 
of diversifying that blank evening with an 
incident. The contrast between what he had 
looked for, and what he had, was wonderful. 
How delicious this stillness should have been, 
this consciousness of having his house to him- 
self, and nobody to interrupt his brief re- 
pose ! But somehow it appears that human 
nature takes best with not having its wishes 
granted. It is indescribable how Dr. Rider 
yawned — how dull he found his newspaper 
— how few books worth reading there were 
in the house — how slow the minutes ran on. 
If somebody had chosen to be ill that night, 
of all nights the best for such a purpose, the 
doctor ‘would not have objected to such an 
interruption. Failing that, he went to bed 
early, dreadfully tired of his own society. 
Such were the wonderful results of that in- 
‘ vasion so much dreaded, and that retreat so 
much hoped for. Perhaps his own society 
had never in his life been so distasteful to 
him before. 

CHAPTER III. 

Next day Dr. Rider audibly congratulated 
himself at breakfast upon having once more 
his house to himself— audibly, as if it were 
really necessary to give utterance to the 
thought before he could quite feel its force. 
A week before, if Fred had departed, how- 
ever summarily, there can be no doubt that 
his brother’s feelings of relief and comfort 
would have been unfeigned ; now, however, 
he began to think the matter over, and to 
justify to himself ’his extraordinary sense of 
disappointment. As he poured out his own 
coffee with a sober face, his eye rested upon 
that easy-chair, which had been brought into 
such prominence in the history of the last 
two days. He kept looking at it as he sipped 


41 

that gloomy coffee. Fred had faded from 
the great chair ; his big image threw no 
shadow upon it. There sat a little fairy 
queen, tiny as Titania, but dark as an elf 
of the East, putting up those two shapely 
tiny hands, brown and beautiful, to push 
aside the flood of hair, which certainly would 
have veiled her little figure all over, the doc- 
tor thought, had it been let down. Won- 
derful little sprite ! She, no doubt, had 
dragged her plaintive sister over the seas — 
she it was that had forced her way into Ed- 
ward Rider’s house, taken her position in it, 
ousted the doctor j and she doubtless it was 
who swept the husband and wife out of it 
again, leaving no trace behind. Waking up 
from a little trance of musing upon this too 
interesting subject. Dr. Rider suddenly raised 
himself into an erect position, body and mind, 
with an involuntary movement, as if to shake 
off the yoke of the enchantress. He reminded 
himself instinctively of his brother’s false- 
hood and ingratitude. After throwing him- 
self a most distasteful burden on Edward’s 
charity for five long dreary months, the 
bugbear of the doctor’s dreams, and heavy 
ever-recurring climax of his uncomfortable 
thoughts, here had Fred departed without a 
word of explanation or thanks, or even with- 
out saying good-by. The doctor thought 
hiihself quite justified in being angry. He 
began to feel that the suspicious uneasiness 
which possessed him was equally natural and 
inevitable. Such a thankless, heartless de- 
parture was enough to put any man out. To 
imagine that Fred could be capable of it, 
naturally went to his brother’s heart. 

That day there was still no word of the 
party who had disappeared so mysteriously 
out of the doctor’s house. Dr. Rider went 
to his hard day’s work vaguely expectant, 
feeling sure he must hear of them somehow, 
and more interested in hearing of them than 
was to be expected from his former low ebb 
of fraternal affection. When he returned 
and found still no letter, no message, the 
blank disappointment of the former night 
closed still more blankly upon him. When 
one is all by one’s self, and has nothing at 
best but an easy-chair to go home to, and 
goes home expecting a letter, or a message, 
or a visitor, who has not arrived, and has no 
chance of arriving, the revulsion of feeling 
is not agreeable. It did not improve the 
doctor’s temper in the fii'st place. The chill 


CHRONICLES OF C/IRLINGFORD. 


42 

loneliness of that trim room, with its drawn 
curtains, and tidy pretence of being com- 
fortable, exasperated him beyond bearing. 
He felt shut up in it, and yet would not leave 
it. Somebody certainly might come even 
to-night. Fred himself, perhaps, if he could 
escape from the rigid guardianship he was 
under; or was that miraculous Australian 
Nettie a little witch, who had spirited the 
whole party in a nutshell over the seas ? 
Never was man delivered from a burden with 
a worse grace than was Dr. Rider ; and the 
matter had not mended in these twenty-four 
hours. 

Next morning, however, this fear of fra- 
ternal suspense was assuaged. A three-cor- 
nered note, addressed in an odd feminine 
hand, very thin, small, and rapid, came 
among Dr. Rider’s letters. He signalled it 
out by instinct, and opened it with an im- 
patience wonderful to behold. 

“ Sir, — We are all at the Angel until we 
can get lodgings, which I hope to be to-day. 
I am utterly ashamed of Fred for not having 
let you know, and indeed of myself for trust- 
ing to him. I should not wonder but we 
may have been under a mistake about him 
and you. If you could call about one, I 
should most likely be in to see you, and per- 
haps you could give me your advice about 
the lodgings. N either of them have the l^st 
judgment in such matters. I am sorry to 
trouble you ; but being a stranger, perhaps 
you will excuse me. I understand you are 
only at home in the evening, and that is just 
the time I can’t come out, as I have the 
whole of them to look to, which is the rea- 
son I ask you to call on me. Begging you 
will pardon me, I remain, 

« Nettie Underwood.” 

“She remains Nettie Underwood,” said 
the doctor unawares. He laughed to him- 
self at that conclusion. Then an odd gleam 
came across his face. It was probably the 
first time he had laughed in a natural fash- 
ion for some months back, and the unusual 
exertion made his cheeks tingle. His tem- 
per was improved that morning. He went 
off to his patients almost in a good-humor. 
When he passed the great house where Bes- 
sie Christian now reigned, he recalled her 
image with a positive effort. Astonishing 
what an effect of distance had floated over 
the apparition of that bride. Was it a year 
since he saw her and gnashed his teeth at 
the thought of his own folly or "was it only 


last Sunday? The doctor could not tell. 
He put Nettie’s note in his pocket-book, and 
was at the hotel door punctually at one 
o’clock. It was in the principal street of 
Carlingford, George Street, where all the 
best shops, and indeed some of the best 
houses, were. From the corner window of 
the hotel you could see down into the bow- 
ery seclusion of Grange Lane, and Mr. 
Wodehouse’s famous apple-trees holding 
tempting clusters over the high wall. The 
prospect was very different from that which 
extended before Dr. Rider’s window. In- 
stinctively he marvelled within himself 
whether, if Dr. Marjoribanks were to die — 
people cannot live forever even in Carling- 
ford — whether it might not be a disadvan- 
tage to a man to live so far out of the world. 

No doubt it was a temptation of the Evil 
One. Happily the young man did not take 
sufficient time to answer himself, but walked | 
forward briskly through the mazy old pas- ' 
sages of the old inn, to a room from which I 
sundry noises issued. Dr. Rider walked in 
with the natural confidence of a man who 
has an appointment. The room w^as in un- 
disturbed possession of three children — 
three children making noise enough for six 
— all very small, very precocious, with star- 
ing round eyes, and the most complete in- 
dependence of speech and manners. The 
doctor confronted the little rabble thunder- ; 
struck; they were his brother’s children, un- 
recognizable little savages as they were,' 
One little fellow, in a linen pinafore, was i 
mounted on the arm of a sofa, sj^urring vig- ! 
orously ; another was pursuing his sister 
about the room, trying to catch her feet with 
the tongs, and filling the air with repeated 
loud snaps of disappointment. They inter- i 
mitted their occupations to stare at liim. 
Look here here s a man,” said the young- ^ 
est, meditatively beholding his dismayed un- ' 
cle with a philosophic eye. “ Can’t some 
one go and tell Nettie ? ” said the little girl, 
gazing also with calm equanimity. “ If he 
wants Nettie he’ll have to wait,” said the el- 
der boy, A pause followed ; the unhappy ; 
doctor stood transfixed by the steady stare j 
of their three pair of eyes. Suddenly the 
little girl burst out of the room, and ran 
screaming along the passage. “ Mamma, 
mamma, here’s a man come,” cried the won- 
derful colonial child. A few minutes after- 
wards their mother appeared, languid and 


CHRONICLES OF 

fadecf^s before. Perhaps she had been even 
prettier than Nettie in her bright days, if 
any had ever been bright for Fred Rider’s 
wife. She was fairer, larger, smoother than 
her sister ; but these advantages had lapsed 
in a general fade, which transformed her 
color into washy pinkness, made her figure 
stoop, and her footsteps drag. She came 
remonstrating all the way in feeble ac- 
cents. It was not for her, certainly, that the 
doctor had taken the trouble to come to the 
Blue Boar. 

“ Please to sit down,” said Mrs. Fred, and 
stood leaning on the table, looking at her 
brother-in-law with a calm curiosity, not un- 
like that of her children. “ Nettie and my 
husband have gone out together ; but now 
that we are all so happy and united,” she 
continued, with a sort of feeble spitefulness, 

“ I am sure it is quite a pity to trouble you. 
You could not take us in, you know. You 
said that very plain, Mr. Edward.” 

It was perfectly true, madam,” said the 
doctor. “ I have not ventured on the step 
my brother has taken, and have naturally 
no accommodation for a family. But I am 
not here for my own pleasure. Your sister, 

I presume it is, wrote to me. I was re- 
quested to call here to-day.” 

“ Oh, yes; Nettie is very self-willed — 
very ; though, of course, we could not get 
on without her. She attacked Fred like a 
wildcat for not writing you : but I dare say, 
if the truth were known, you did not ex- 
pect to hear from my husband,” said the 
wife, recovering voice, and fixing a vindic- 
tive gaze upon her visitor, who felt himself 
betrayed. 

I came by Miss Underwood’s instructions 
and at her request,” said the unfortunate 
man. We need not enter into any ques- 
tion betw'een Fred and myself.” 

Ah, yes, that is very safe and wise for 
you,” laughed Fred’s wife. 

The doctor was deeply exasperated, as was 
only natural: he eyed the feeble, helpless 
creature for a moment angrily, provoked to 
answer her ; but his gaze became one of 
wonder and dismay before he withdrew it. 
Surely, of all incomprehensible entities, the 
most amazing is a fool — a creature insensate, 
unreasoning, whom neither argument nor 
fact can make any impression upon. Ap- 
palled and impressed, the doctor’s gaze left 


CARLINGFORD. 43 

that pretty faded face to turn upon' the chil- 
dren. Dreadful imps ! If Fred had only 
taken to evil ways after he became pos- 
sessed of such a family, his brother could 
have forgiven him. While these thoughts 
passed through Dr. Rider’s mind, however, 
deliverance approached. He heard Nettie’s 
voice in the passage, long before she reached 
the door. Not that it was loud like the 
voices of this dreadful household ; but the 
tone was sufficiently peculiar to be recog- 
nized anywhere. With a most penetrating 
clearness, it came through the long passages, 
words inaudible, only the sound of a voice, 
rapid, breathless, decided — with the distant 
sound of Fred’s long, shambling, uncertain 
footstep coming in as the strange accompa- 
niment. Then they enter the room — the one 
tiny, bright, dauntless, an intrepid, undis- 
couragable little soul ; the other with his 
heavy, large limbs, his bemused face, his 
air of hopeless failure, idleness, content. 
Edward Rider gazed involuntarily from one 
to another of this t^vo. He saw the sprite 
place herself between the husband and ‘wife, 
a vain little Quixote, balancing these ex- 
tremes of helplessness and ruin. He could 
not help looking at her -with a certain un- 
conscious admiration and amazement, as he 
might have looked at a forlorn hope. Thou- 
sands of miles away from her friends, wher- 
ever and whatever they might be, with Fred 
and his wife and children on her hands, a 
household of incapables — what was that lit- 
tle creature to do ? 

“ Good-morning, Dr. Edward,” said Net- 
tie. “ I thought I should have been back 
sooner ; but Fred is so slow, I cannot man- 
age to get him along at all. We have 
found some lodgings a little way out of Car- 
lingford, near that chapel, you know, or 
church, or something that stands a little 
off the road; where it’s open, and there’s 
morning service, and such a handsome young 
clergyman. Who is he ? We went into the 
chapel, and it’s so fine, you would not be- 
lieve it. Well, just a hundred yards from 
there is the house. Four rooms, exactly 
what I wanted, with a garden for the chil- 
dren to play in — quite quiet and fresh and 
pleasant. Tell me who the people are — their 
name is Smith. If they’re respectable. I’ll 
go back and take it. I can afford the rent.” 

“ Near St. Roque’s ? They belong to the^ 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


44 

churcli there. I dare say they are all right,” 
said the doctor, “ hut it is a long way off, and 
inconvenient, and — ” 

“ That is just why I want it,” said Nettie. 

“ We never were used to conveniences, and 
none of us want to be much in the town, so 
far as I know. It is the very thing. Why 
has not lunch come up ?— what do these 
people mean, Susan, by not attending to 
their orders ? Ring the bell, Freddy— ring 
loud ; and after lunch, as your drag is at the 
door. Dr. Edward, you’ll drive me down to 
this place again, that I may secure it, wont 
you ? I want to have a talk with you besides. 
Lunch, please, immediately. I ordered it to 
be ready at one — now it is half-past. We 
can’t have our time wasted this way. Dr. 
Edward, please, you’ll stay.” 

The doctor gazed with ever-increasing 
amazement at the little speaker. Nobody 
else had spoken a word. Fred had nodded 
to him sullenly. Fred’s wife had sunk back 
on the sofa — everybody seemed to recognize 
Nettie as supreme. He hesitated, it must 
be confessed, to put his grievances so en- 
tirely aside as to sit down in perfect amity 
with Fred and his household ; but to refuse 
to drive Nettie to St. Roque’s was impossi- 
ble. The blood rushed to the doctor’s face 
at the thought. What the world of Carling- 
ford would say to see his well-known vehicle 
proceeding down Grange Lane, through Dr. 
Marjoribanks’ territories, under such circum- 
stances, was a question he did not choose to 
consider ; neither did he enter too minutely 
into the special moment at which his next 
patient might be expecting him. The young 
man was under the spell and did not strug- 
gle against it. He yielded to the invitation, 
which was a command. He drew near the 
table at which Nettie, without hesitation, 
took the presiding place. A dull amount of 
conversation, often interrupted by that lively 
little woman, rose in the uncongenial party. 
Nettie cut up the meat for those staring imps 
of children — did them all up in snowy nap- 
kins — ^kept them silent and in order. She 
regulated what Susan was to have, and which 
things were best for Fred. She appealed to 
Dr. Edward perpetually, taking him into 
her confidence in a way which could not fail 
to be flattering to that young man, and ac- 
^ tually reduced to the calmness of an or- 
dinary friendly party this cii’cle so full 
of smouldering elements of commotion. 


Through all she was so dainty, so pretty, 
her rapid fingers so shapely, her eager talk 
so sweet-toned, that it was beyond the power 
of mortal man to remain uninterested. It 
■sVas a development of womankind unknown 
to Dr. ilider. Bessie Christian had ex- 
hausted the race for him until now ; but 
Nettie was a thousand times more piquant 
than Bessie Christian. He gazed and won- 
dered, and moralized secretly in his own 
mind, what was to become of the girl ? — 
what could she do ? 

“ You have left some of your things at my 
house, Fred,” said the doctor, making an 
attempt to approach his sullen brother, who 
evidently expected no overtures of friendship. 

“ Yes. Mrs. Rider, you see, arrived unex- 
pectedly,” said Fred, with confusion — “in 
fact, I knew nothing about it, or — or I should 
have told you — ^Nettie — ” 

“ Nettie thought it best to come off at once, 
without writing,” explained Fred’s wife. 

“ What was the use of writing ? ” criod 
that little person. “You had written to 
Fred for six months without ever getting an 
answer. You made everybody unhappy 
round you with your fears and troubles about 
him. I knew perfectly he was quite well and 
enjoying himself; but,, of course, Susan 
would not be convinced. So what was there 
for it but bringing her away ? What else 
could I do. Dr. Edward ? And to leave the 
children would have been preposterous. In 
the first place, I should have been miserable 
about them ; and so, as soon as she found 
Fred was all right, would Susan : and some- 
thing would certainly have happened — scar- 
let fever or something — and at the end of, 
all I should have had to go out again to 
fetch them. So the shortest way was to 
bring them at once. Don’t you think so ? 
And to see us all here so comfortable, I am 
sure is enough to repay any one for the 
trouble. Fred, don’t drink any more beer.” 

Nettie put out her tiny hand as she spoke 
to arrest the bottle. Fred stared at her with 
a dull red flush on his face ; but he gave in, 
in the most inexplicable way ; it seemed a 
matter of course to yield to Nettie. The 
doctor’s amazement began to be mingled 
with amusement. To see how she managed 
them all was worth the sacrifice of a little 
time — unconsciously he became more frater- 
nal in his thoughts. He spoke to foolish, 
faded Mrs. Fred with a total forgiveness 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


and forgetfulness of her spiteful speech. He 
hoped she would like Carlingford ; he said 
something to the children. But it was not 
easy to talk in the presence of that amazing 
family party, the existence of which he had 
not dreamed of a few days ago. To see his 
brother at the head of such a group had, in 
spite of himself, a wonderful effect upon Dr. 
Rider. Their children, of course, must be 
supported somehow.. AVho was to do it? 
Was their father, grown incapable and use- 
less in the middle of his days, to be forced 
* into the current of life again ? Was it a 
vague faith in Providence which had brought 
the helpless household here ; or was it a more 
distinct, if not so elevated, confidence in 
Nettie ? The doctor’s heart sank once more 
within him as he looked round the table. 
Three helpless by nature — two equally help- 
less who ought in nature to have been the 
support of the whole — nothing but one bright 
ready little spirit between them all and des- 
titution: and what could Nettie do to stave 
that wolf from the door ? Once more Dr. 
Rider’s countenance fell. If the household 
broke down in its attempt at independence, 
who had they to turn to but himself? — such 
a prospect was not comfortable. When a 
man works himself to death for his own 
family, he takes the pleasure with the pain ; 
but when another’s family threatens to fall 
upon his hands, the prospect is naturally 
appalling — and even if Fred could do any 
thing, what was Fred’s life, undermined by 
evil habit, to depend upon ? Silence once 
more fell over the little company— silence 
from all but Nettie and the children, who 
referred to her naturally instead of to their 
'mother. Fred was sullen, r.r.d his wife took 
her cue from him. Edward was uneasy and 
dismayed. Family parties suddenly assem- 
bled without due warning are seldom greatly 
successful ; and even Nettie could not make 
immediate reconciliation and fraternal kind- 
ness out of this. 

CHAPTER IV. 

“ Take me down this long, pretty road. 
There must be delicious houses inside the 
walls. Look here, drive slowly, and let us 
have a peep in at this open door,” said Net- 
tie. “ How sweet and cozy ! and who is that 
pretty young lady coming out ? I saw her 
in the chapel this morning. Oh,” added 
Nettie, with a little sharpness, “ she knows 
you — tell me who she is.” 


45 

“ That is Miss Lucy Wodehouse — one of 
our Carlingford beauties,” said Dr. Rider. 

“ Do you know her very well ? ” asked the 
inquisitive Nettie. “ How she stares — why 
does she stare, do you suppose ? Is there 
any thing absurd about my dress ? Look 
here — don’t they wear bonnets just like this 
in England ? ” 

“ So far as I am able to judge,” said the 
doctor, looking at the tiny head overladen 
with hair, from which the bonnet had fallen 
half off. 

“I suppose she is surprised to see me. 
Drive on faster. Dr. Edward, I want to talk 
to you. I see Fred has been telling us a 
parcel of stories. It would be cruel to tell 
Susan, you know, for she believes in him ; 
but you may quite trust in me. Is your 
brother good for any thing. Dr. Edward, do 
you suppose ? ” 

Not very much now, I fear,” said the 
doctor. 

“Not very much now. I suppose he 
never was good for much,” said the indig- 
nant Nettie ; “ but he was said to be very 
clever when he first came out to the colony. 
I can’t tell why Susan married him. She is 
very self-willed, though you would fancy her 
so submissive. She is one of those people, 
you know, who fall ill when they are crossed, 
and threaten to die, so that one daren’t cross 
her. Now, then, what is to be done with 
them ? He will not go back to the colony, 
and I don’t care to do it myself. Must I 
keep them here ? ” 

“ Miss Underwood — ” began the perplexed 
doctor. 

“ It would save trouble to call me Nettie 
everybody does,” said his strange compan- 
ion ; “ besides, you are my brother in a kind 
of a way, and the only person I can consult 
with j for, of course, it would not do to tell 
one’s difficulties to strangers. Fred may not 
be very much to depend upon, you know, but 
still he is Fred.” 

“ Yes,” said the doctor, with a little self- 
reproach, “ still he is Fred ; but pardon me, 
the name suggests long aggravations. You 
can’t tell how often I have had to put up 
with affronts and injuries because it was 
Fred. I shouldn’t like to grieve you—” 

“ Never mind about grieving me ; — I ahi 
not in love with him ; — let me hear all about 
it ! ” said Nettie. 

Dr. Rider paused a little ; seeing the abyss 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


46 

upon the brink of which this brave little 
girl was standing, he had not the heart to 
aggravate her by telling the failures of the 
past. Better to soften the inevitable discov- 
ery if possible. But his hesitation was quite 
apparent to Nettie. With considerable im- 
patience she turned round upon him. 

If you think I don’t know what I am do- 
ing, but have gone into this business like a 
fool, you are quite mistaken, Dr. Edward,” 
she said, a little sharply. “I see how it is 
as well as anybody can do. I knew how it 
was when I left the colony. Don’t be 
alarmed about me. Do you think I am to 
be turned against my own flesh and blood 
by finding out their follies ; or to grumble 
at the place God put mein? Nothing of 
the sort ! I know the kind of situation 
perfectly — but one may make the best of it, 
you know : and for that reason tell me every 
thing, please.” 

“ But, Miss Underwood, consider,” cried 
the doctor in consternation. “You are tak- 
ing responsibilities upon yourself which no- 
body could lay upon you ; you ! young, ten- 
der,” — the doctor paused for a word, afraid 
to be too complimentary, — “ delicate ! Why, 
the whole burden of this family will come 
upon you. There is not one able to help 
himself in the whole bundle ! I am shocked ! 
— I am alarmed ! — don’t know what to say 
to you — ” 

“ Don’t say any thing please,” said Nettie. 
“ I know what I am about. Do you call this 
a street or a lane, or what do you call it ? 
Oh, such nice houses ! shouldn’t I like to be 
able to afford to have' one of them, and 
nurses, and governesses, and every thing 
proper for the children? I should like to 
dress them so nicely, and give them such a 
good education. I don’t know any thing 
particular to speak of, myself — I shall never 
be able to teach them when they grow older. 
If Fred, now, was only to be trusted, and 
would go and work like a man and make 
something for the children, I daresay I could 
keep up the house ; — ^but if he wont do any 
thing, you know, it will take us every far- 
thing just to live. Look here. Dr. Edward : 
I have two hundred a year ; — Susan had the 
same, you know, but Fred got all the money 
when they were married, and muddled it 
away. Now, how much can one do in Car- 
-lingford with three children upon two hun- 
dred a year ? ” 


“ Fred will be the meanest blackguard in 
existence,” cried the doctor, “ if he takes his 
living from you.” 

“ He took his living from you, it appears,” 
said Nettie, coolly, “ and did not thank you 
much. We must make the best of him. We 
can’t help ourselves. Now, there is the 
pretty church, and there is our little house. 
Come in with me and answer for me. Dr, 
Edward. You can say I am your sister-in- 
law, you know, and then, perhaps, we can 
get into possession at once ,* for,” said Net- 
tie, suddenly turning round upon the doctor 
with her brilliant eyes shining out quaintly 
under the little brow all puckered into curves 
of foresight, “ it is so sadly expensive living 
where we are now.” 

To look at the creature thus flashing those 
shining eyes, not without a smile lurking in 
their depths, upon him — to see the trium- 
phant, undaunted, undoubting youthfulness 
which never dreamt of failure — to note that 
pretty anxiety, the look which might have 
become a bride in her first troubles “ play- 
ing at housekeeping,” and think how des- 
perate was the position she had assumed, 
how dreary the burden she had taken upon 
her, — was almost too much for the doctor’s 
self-control. He did not know whether to 
admire the little heroine as half divine, or 
to turn from her as half crazy. Probably, 
had the strange little spirit possessed a dif- 
ferent frame, the latter was the sentiment 
which would have influenced the unimagina- 
tive mind of Edward Rider. But there was 
no resisting that little brown Titania, with 
her little head overladen with its beautiful 
hair, her red, delicate mouth closing firm and 
sweet above that little decided chin, her eyes 
which seemed to concentrate the light. She 
seemed only a featherweight when the be- 
wildered doctor helped her to alight— an un- 
doubted sprite and creature of romance. 
But to hear her arranging about all the do- 
mestic necessities within, and disclosing her 
future plans for the children, and all the or- 
der of that life of which she took the charge 
so unhesitatingly, bewildered the mistress of 
the house as much as it did the wondering 
doctor. The two together stood gazing at 
her as she moved about the room, pouring 
forth floods of eager talk. Her w'ords were 
almost as rapid as her step, — her foot, light 
as it was, almost as decided and firm as her 
resolutions. She was a w^onder to behold 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 47 


as she pushed about the furniture, and con- 
sidered how it could be brightened up and 
made more comfortable. Gazing at her with 
his silent lips apart, Dr. Rider sighed at the 
word. Comfortable ! Was she to give her 
mind to making Fred and his children com- 
fortable — such a creature as this ? Involun- 
tarily it occurred to Edward that, under such 
ministrations, sundry changes might come 
over the aspect of that prim apartment in 
which he had seen her first ; the room with 
the bookcase and the red curtains, and the 
prints over the. mantlepiece — a very tidy, 
comfortable room before any bewitching imp 
came to haunt it, and whisper suspicions of 
its imperfection — the doctor’s own retire- 
ment where he had. chewed the cud of sweet 
and bitter fancies often enough, without 
much thought of his surroundings. But 
Nettie now had taken possession of that pro- 
saic place, and, all unconscious of that spir- 
itual occupation, was as busy arid as excited 
about Mrs. Smith’s lodgings at St. Roque’s 
Cottage as if it were an ideal home she was 
preparing, and the life to be lived in it was 
the brightest and most hopeful in the world. 

When Dr. Rider reached home that night, 
and took his lonely meal in his lonely room, 
certain bitter thoughts of unequal fortune 
occupied the young man’s mind. Let a fel-. 
low be but useless, thankless, and heartless 
enough, and people spring up on all sides to 
do his work for him, said the doctor to him- 
self, with a bitterness as natural as it was 
untrue. The more worthless a fellow is, the 
more all the women connected with him cling 
to him and make excuses for him, said Ed- 
* ward Rider in his indignant heart. Mother 
and sister in the past — wife and Nettie now 
— to think how Fred had secured for him- 
self perpetual ministrations, by neglecting 
all the duties of life. No wonder an indig- 
nant pang transfixed the lonely bosom of the 
virtuous doctor, solitary and unconsolecf as 
he was. His laborious days knew no such 
solace. And as he fretted and pondered no 
visions of Bessie Christian perplexed his 
thoughts. He had forgotten that young 
woman. All his mind was fully occupied 
chaffing at the sacrifice of Nettie. He was 
not sorry, he was angry, to think of her odd 
position, and the duties she had taken upon 
herself. What had she to do with those 
wretched children, and that faded spiteful 
mother ? Edward Rider was supremely dis- 
gusted. He said to himself, with the high- 


est moral indignation, that such a girl ought 
not to be permitted to tie herself to such a 
fate. 

CHAPTER V. 

St. Roque’s Cottage was considered 
rather a triumph of local architecture. A 
Carlingford artist had built it “after ’’the 
church, which was one of Gilbert Scott’s 
churches, and perfect in its way, so that its 
Gothic qualities were unquestionable. The 
only thing wanting was size, which was cer- 
tainly an unfortunate blemish, and made 
this adaptation of ecclesiastical architecture 
to domestic purposes a very doubtful experi- 
ment. How'ever, in bright sunshine, when 
the abundance of light neutralized the want 
of window, all was well, and there was abun- 
dance of sunshine in Carlingford in October, 
three months after the entrance of Fred Rider 
and his family into Mrs. Smith’s little rooms. 
It was a bright autumn day, still mild, though 
with a crispness in the air, the late season 
showing more in the destitution of the flower- 
borders than in any more sensible sign. It 
w^as a pretty spot enough for a roadside. 
St. Roque’s stood on the edge of a little com- 
mon, over which, at the other margin, you 
could see some white cottages, natural to the 
soil, in a little hamlet-cluster, dropped along 
the edge of the gray-green unequal grass, 
while between the church and the cottage 
ran the merest shadow of a brook, just 
enough to give place and nutriment to three 
willow-trees which had been the feature of 
the scene before St. Roque’s was, and w'hich 
now greatly helped the composition of the 
little landscape, and harmonized the new 
building with the old soil. St. Roque’s Cot- 
tage, by special intervention of Mr. Went- 
worth the perpetual curate, had dropped no 
intervening wall between its garden and those 
trees ; but, not without many fears, had 
contented itself with a w'ooden paling on the 
side nearest the willows. Consequently, the 
slope of grass at that side, which Mrs, Smith 
was too prudent to plant with any thing that 
could be abstracted, w\as a pretty slope with 
the irregular willow shadows swept over it, 
thin, but still presenting a pale obstruction 
to the flood of sunshine on this special after- 
noon. There a little group was collected, 
in full enjoyment of the warmth and the 
light. Mrs. Rider, still faded, but no longer 
travel-worn, sat farther up in the garden, on 
the green bench, which had been softened 
with cushions for her use, leisurely working 
at some piece of needlework, in lonely pos- 
session of the chrysanthemums and Michael- 
mas daisies round her ; while on the grass, 
dropped over with yellow flecks of willow 
leaves, lightly loosened by every passing 
touch of wind, sat Nettie, all brown and 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


48 

bright, working with the most rapid fingers 
at a child’s frock, and “ minding ” with a 
corner of her eye the possessor of the same, 
the tiny Freddy, an imp of mischief, uncon- 
trollable by other hand or look than hers. 
A little lower down, poking into the invisi- 
ble brook through the paling, was the eldest 
boy, silent from sheer delight in the unex- 
pected pleasure of coating himself with mud 
without remark from Nettie. This unprece- 
dented escape arose from the fact that Net- 
tie had a visitor, a lady who had bent down 
beside her in a half-kneeling attitude, and 
was contemplating her with a mingled amaze 
and pity which intensified the prevailing ex- 
pression of kindness in the mildest face in 
the world. It was Miss Wodehouse, in her 
soft dove-colored dress and large soft checked 
shawl. Her mild eyes were fixed upon that 
brilliant brown creature, all buoyant and 
sparkling with youth. These wonderful 

oung people perplexed Miss Wodehouse ; 

ere was another incomprehensible specimen 
— most incomprehensible perhaps of all that 
ever crossed her mild elderly horizon with 
bewildering unintelligible light. 

“ My dear,” said Miss Wodehouse, “ things 
used to be very different when I was young. 
When w'e were girls we thought about our 
own pleasures — and — and vanities of all 
kinds,” said the good woman, with a little 
sigh ; “ and, indeed, I can’t think it is nat- 
ural still to see you devoting yourself like 
this to your sister’s family. It is wonderful ; 
but dear, dear me ! it isn’t natural, Nettie, 
such self-devotion.” 

“ I do wish you wouldn’t speak ! ” said 
Nettie, with a sudden start — “ self-devotion ! 
stuff ! I am only doing what must be done. 
Freddy can’t go on wearing one frock for- 
ever, can he — does it stand to reason? 
Would you have me sit idle and see the 
child’s petticoats drop to pieces? I am a 
colonial girl — I don’t know what people do 
in England. Where I was brought up we 
were used to be busy about whatever lay 
nearest to our hand.” 

“ It isn’t Freddy’s frock,” said Miss Wode- 
house, with a little solemnity. “You know 
very well what I mean. And suppose you 
were to marry — what would happen suppos- 
ing you were to marry, Nettie ? ” 

“ It is quite time enough to think of that 
when there is any likelihood of it happening,” 
said Nettie, with a little toss of her head. “ It 
is only idle people who have time to think of 
falling in love and such nonsense. When one 
is very busy it never comes into one’s head. 
Why, you have never married, Miss Wode- 
house : and when I know that I have every 
thing I possibly could desire, why should I ? ” 

Miss Wodehouse bent her troubled, sw'eet 
old face over the handle of her parasol, and 


did not say any thing for a few minutes. 
“ It is all very w^ell as long as you are young,” 
she said, with a wdstful look ; “ and somehow 
you young creatures are so much handier 
than we used to be. Our little Lucy, you 
know, that I can remember quite a baby — I 
am twice as old as she is,” cried Miss Wode- 
house, “ and she is twice as much use in the 
w'orld as I. Well, it is all very strange. But, 
dear, you know, this isn’t natural all the 
same.” 

“ It is dreadful to say so — it is dreadful 
to think so ! ” cried Nettie. “ I kijow w'hat 

ou mean — not Freddy’s frock, to be sure, 

ut only one’s whole life and heart. Should 
one desert the only people belonging to one 
in the world because one happens to have a 
little income and they have none ? If one’s 
friends are not very sensible, is that a rea- 
son why one should go and leave them ? Is 
it right to make one’s escape directly when- 
ever one feels one is wanted ? or what do 
you mean, Miss Wodehouse ? ” said the ve- 
hement girl. “ That is what it comes to, 
you know. Do you imagine I had any choice 
about coming over to England when Susan 
was breaking her heart about her husband ? 
could one let one’s sister die, do you suppose ? 
And now that they are all together, what 
choice have I ? They can’t do much for each 
other — there is actually nobody but me to 
take care of them all. You may say it is not 
natural, or it is not right, or any thing you 
please, but what else can one do ? That is 
the practical question,” said Nettie, triumph- 
antly. “ If you will answer that, then I shall 
know what to say to you.” 

Miss Wodehouse gazed at her with a cer- 
tain mild exasperation, shook her head, 
wrung her hands, but could find nothing to 
answer. 

“I thought so,” said Nettie, with a little- 
outburst of jubilee; “that is how it always 
happens to abstract people. Put the prac- 
tical question before them, and they have 
not a word to say to you. Freddy, cut the 
grass with the scissors, don’t cut my trim- 
mings ; they are for your own frock, you lit- 
tle s^avage. If I were to say it was my duty 
antr’aH that sort of stuff, you would under- 
stand me. Miss Wodehouse ; but one only 
says it is one’s duty when one has something 
disagreeable to do ; and I am not doing any 
thing disagreeable,” added the little heroine, 
flashing those eyes which had confused Ed- 
ward Rider — those brilliant, resolute, obsti- 
nate eyes, always, with the smile of youth, 
incredulous of evil, lurking in them*, upon 
her bewildered adviser. “ I am living as I 
like to live.” 

There was a pause — at least there was a 
pause in the argument, but not in Nettie’s 
talk, which ran on in an eao^er stream, ad- 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 49 


dressed to Freddy, Johnnie, things in gen- 
eral. Miss Wodeliouse pondered over the 
handle of her parasol. She had absolutely 
nothing to say ; but, thoroughly unconvinced 
and exasperated at Nettie’s logic, could not 
yet retire from the field. 

“ It is all very well to talk just now,” said 
the gentle woman at last, retiring upon that 
potent feminine argument, “but Nettie, 
think ! If you were to marry — ” 

Miss Wodehouse paused, appalled by the 
image she herself had conjured up. 

“ Marrying is really a drea^ul business, 
anyhow,” she added with a sigh ; “ so few 
people, you know, can, when they might. 
There is poor Mr. Wentworth, who brought 
me here first; unless he gets preferment, 
poor fellow — . And there is Dr. Rider. 
Things are very much changed from what 
they used to be in my young days.” 

“ Is Dr. Rider in the same dilemma ? I 
suppose, of course, you mean Dr. Edward,” 
cried Nettie, with a little flash of mischiev- 
ous curiosity. “ Why ? He has nobody 
but himself. I should like to know why he 
can’t marry — that is, if anybody would have 
him — when he pleases. Tell me ; you know 
he is my brother-in-law.” 

Miss Wodehouse had been thinking of 
Bessie Christian. She paused, partly for 
Dr. Rider’s sake, partly because it was quite 
contrary to decorum, to suppose that Bessie, 
now Mrs. Brown, might possibly a year ago 
have married somebody else. She faltered 
a little in her answer. “ A professional man 
never marries till he has a position,” said 
Miss Wodehouse, abstractedly. Nettie lifted 
up her eyes that danced with mischief and glee. 

“ A profession is as bad as a family, then,” 
said the little Australian. “ I shall remem- 
ber that next time you speak to me on this 
subject. I am glad to think Dr. Edward, 
with all his prudence, is disabled too.” 

When Nettie had made this unguarded 
speech, she blushed ; and suddenly in a 
threatening and defiant manner, raised her 
eyes again to Miss Wodehouse’s face. 
Why? Miss Wodehouse did not under- 
stand the look, nor put any significance into 
the words. She rose up from the grass, and 
said it was time for her to go. She went 
away, pondering in her own mind those sin- 
gular new experiences of hers. She had 
never been called upon to do any thing par- 
ticular all her gentle life. Another fashion 
of woman might have found a call to action 
in the management of her father’s house, or 
the education of her motherless young sister. 
But Miss Wodehouse had contented herself 
with loving Lucy— had sufiered her to grow 
up very much as she would, without inter- 
ference — had never taken a decided part in 
her life. When any thing had to be done, 

CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


to tell the truth, she was very inexpert — im- 
ready-~deeply embarrassed with the unusual 
necessity. Nettie’s case, so wonderfully dif- 
ferent from any thing she could have con- 
ceived, lay on her mind, and oppressed her 
as she went home to Grange Lane. 

As for Nettie herself, she took her work 
and her children indoors after awhile, and 
tried on the new frock, and scolded and re- 
habilitated the muddy hero of the brook. 
Then, with those light, fairy motions of hers, 
she spread the homely table for tea, called 
in Susan, sought Fred in his room up-stairs 
with a stinging word which penetrated even 
his callous mind, and made him for the mo- 
ment ashamed of himself. Nettie bit her 
red lip till it grew white and bloodless as 
she turned from Fred’s door. It was not 
hard to work for the children — to support 
and domineer over Susan ; but it was hard 
for such an alert uncompromising little soul 
to tolerate that useless hulk — that heavy 
encumbrance of a man, for whom hope and 
life were dead. She bit her lip as she dis- 
charged her sharp, stinging arrow at him 
through the half-opened door, and then went 
down singing, to take her place at the table 
which her own hands had spread — which her 
own purse supplied with bread. Nobody 
there showed the least consciousness of that 
latter fact ; nobody fancied it was any thing 
but natural to rely upon Nettie. The strange 
household demeaned itself exactly as if things 
were going on in the most regular and ordi- 
nary course. No wonder that spectators 
outside looked on with a wonder that could 
scarcely find expression ; and, half exasper- 
ated, half admiring, watched the astonish- 
ing life of the colonial girl. 

Nobody watched it with half the amount 
of exasperation which concentrated in the 
bosom of Dr. Rider. He gazed and noted 
and observed every thing with a secret rage, 
indignation, and incredulity impossible to de- 
scribe. He could not believe it even when it 
went on before his very eyes. Doctor though 
he w^as, and scientific, to a certain extent, 
Edward Rider would have believed in witch- 
craft — in some philtre or potion acting upon 
her mind, rather than in Nettie's voluntary 
folly. Was it folly ? was it heroism ? was 
it simple necessity, as she herself called it ? 
Nobody could answer that question. The 
matter*^ was as incomprehensible to Miss 
Wodehouse as to Dr. Rider, but not of such 
engrossing interest. Bessie Christian, after 
all, grew tame in the Saxon composure of 
her beauty before this brown, sparkling, self- 
willed, imperious creature. To see her 
among her self-imposed domestic duties 
filled the doctor with a smouldering wrath 
against all surrounding her, which any mo- 
mentary spark might set aflame. . 


50 THE DOCTOI 

CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD ; THE 
DOCTOR’S family. 

♦ PAKT II. — CHAPTER VI. 

Affairs went on in Carlingford witli the 
usual commonplace pertinacity of human af- 
fairs. Notable events happened but seldom 
in anybody’s life, and niatters rolled back 
into their ordinary routine, or found a new 
routine for themselves after the ordinary 
course of humanity. After the extraordinary 
advent of Nettie and her strange household — 
after the setting-out of that little w’onderful 
establishment, with all the amazed expecta- 
tion it excited — it was strange to see how 
every tiling settled down, and how calmly the 
framework of common life took in that excep- 
tional and half-miraculous picture. Lookers- 
on prophesied that it never could last — that in 
the very nature of things some sudden crisis or 
collapse must ensue, and the vain experi- 
ment prove a failure ; but quiet ilature and 
steady time prevailed over these moralists 
and their prophecies. 'The winter went on 
calmly day by day, and Nettie and her de- 
pendants became legitimate portions of Car- 
lingford society. People ceased to wonder 
by degrees. Gradually the eyes of Carling- 
ford grew accustomed to that dainty tiny fig- 
ure sweeping along, by mere impulse of cheer- 
ful will and ceaseless activity, the three open- 
eyed, staring children, the faded mother. 
Sometimes, indeed, Nettie, too clear of the 
necessity of her own exertions, and too sim- 
ply bent upon her business, to feel any sen- 
timental shame of her relations, was seen 
quickening the sluggish steps of Fred him- 
self, who shuffled along by her side in a cer- 
tain flush of self-disgust, never pereeptible 
upon him under any other circumstances. 
Even Fred was dully moved by her vicinity. 
When he saw other people look at them, his 
bemused intellect was still alive enough to 
comprehend that people were aware of his 
dismal dependence upon that fairy creature, 
whom it was a shame to think of as the sup- 
port not only of his deserted children, but of 
his own base comforts and idleness. But the 
spur, though it pricked, did not goad him 
into any action. When he got home, he 
took refuge in his room up-stairs, in the 
hazy atmosphere drugged with the heavy 
fumes of his pipe, and stretched his slovenly 
limbs on his sofa, and buried his confused 
faculti^ in his old novel. So he lived day 


As FAMILY. ^ 

by day, circumscribed in the most dangerous 
of his indulgences by Nettie’s unhesitating 
strictures and rules, ■which nobody dared 
break, but unlimited in his indolence, his 
novel, and his pipe. That stifling fire, that 
close room, the ashes of the pipe on the ta- 
ble, the listless shabby figure on the sofa, 
were the most dismal part of the interior at 
St. Boque’s Cottage, so far as it appeared to 
the external eye. But it is doubtful whether 
Mrs. Fred, spiteful and useless, with her 
poor health, her selfish love, her utter un- 
reason, dawdling over trifling matters which 
she never completed ; or the three children, 
entirely unrespectful of father or mother, 
growing up amid that wonderful subver- 
sion of the ordinary rules of nature, with 
some loyalty to Nettie, but no reverence in 
them, were not as appalling companions to 
live with. Nettie, however, did not consider 
the matter as a spectator might. She did 
not enter into it at all as a matter be criti- 
cised ; they simply belonged to her as they 
were. She kne-w: their faults without loving 
them less, or feeling it possible that faults 
could make any difierence to those bonds of 
nature. Fred, indeed, did afflict her lively, 
impatient spirit ; — she had tried to quicken 
him into life at first-— she gave him up with 
a certain frank scorn now, and accepted her 
position. Thus he was to be all his life long 
this big cumbercr of the ground. Nettie, 
valorous and simple, made up her mind to 
it. He was Fred — that was all that could 
be said on the subject ; and, being Fred, be- 
longed to her, and had to be cared for like 
the rest. 

It all grew into a matter of routine as that 
winter glided along ; outside and in, every- 
body came to take it for granted. Miss 
Wodehouse, who, with a yearning admira- 
tion of a creature so totally unlike herself, 
came often to visit Nettie, ceased to expost- 
ulate, almost ceased to wonder. Mr. Went- 
worth no longer opened his fine eyes in 
amazement \|i;hen that household was named. 
Mrs. Smith, their landlady, calmly brought 
her bills to Nettie, and forgot that it was 
not the most natural thing in the world that 
she should be paid by Miss Underwood. The 
only persistent sceptic was the doctor. Ed- 
ward Bider could not, w'ould not, believe it. 
He who had so chafed under Fred’s society, 
felt it beyond the bounds of human possibil- 
ity that Nettie could endure him. He watched 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


with an eagerness which he found it difficult 
to account for, to see the first symptoms of 
disgust which must ere tong mark the fail- 
ure of this bold but foolish venture. It oc- 
cupied his mind a great deal more than was 
good for his own comfort ; perhaps more 
than was best for his patients. Though he 
had few people to visit in that quarter of the 
town, his drag was seen to pass St. Roque’s 
Cottage most days of the w'eek ; and when 
urgent messages came for Dr. Rider in the 
evening, his little groom always wended bis 
way out through the special district of Dr. 
Majoribanks to find his master, if the doctor 
was not at home. Not that all this devotion 
assisted him much either in increase of 
friendship with his relations, or in verifica- 
tion of his auguries. The disgust of the 
young doctor, when he saw his brother’s 
slovenly figure in his own chair, was nothing 
to his disgust now, when he saw that same 
form, so out of accordance with the neat lit- 
tle sitting-room which Nettie’s presence 
made dainty and refined in its hohieliness, 
lounging in Nettie’s way. He could not bring 
himself to speak with ordinary patience to 
Fred ; and Fred, obtuse as he was, perceived 
his brother’s disgust and contempt, and re- 
sented it sullenly ; and betrayed his resent- 
ment to the foolish wife, who sulked and 
said spiteful things to Edward. It was not 
a pleasant family group. As for Nettie, she 
was much too fully occupied to give her so- 
ciety or conversation to Dr. Rider. She 
came and went while he w^as there, busy 
about a thousand things, always alert, de- 
cided, uncompromising — not disinclined to 
snub Fred or Susan when opportunity of- 
fered, totally unconscious even of that deli- 
cacy with which a high fantastical heroine 
of romance would have found it necessary to 
treat her dependants. ’ It was this uncon- 
sciousness, above all, that irritated the doc- 
tor. If she had shown any feeling, he said 
to himself— if she had even been |^andly 
aware of sacrificing herself and doing her 
duty — there would haye been some consola- 
tion in it. But Nettie obstinately refused to 
be said to do her duty. She was doing her 
own will with an imperious distinctness and 
energy— having her own way— displaying no 
special virtue, but a determined wilfulness. 
Dr. Rider was half disgusted with Nettie, to 
see how little disgust she showed of her com- 
panions. He was disappointed in her : he con- 


51 

eluded to himself that she did not show that 
fine perception which he was disposed to ex- 
pect from so dainty a little sprite. Yet, nqt- 
withstanding all these disappointed expecta- 
tions, it is astonishing how he haunted that 
room w'here the society was so unattractive, 
and bore Mrs. Fred’s spiteful speeches, and 
suffered hfs eyes and his temper to be vexed 
beyond endurance by the dismal sight of his 
brother. The children, too, w'orried their un- 
fortunate uncle beyond description. He did 
not dislike children ; as a general rule, 
mothers in the other end of Carlingford, in- 
deed, declared the doctor to be wonderfully 
tender and indulgent to his little patients , 
but those creatures, with their round, staring 
eyes, the calm remarks they made upon their 
father’s slovenly indolence and their moth- 
er’s imbecility — their precocious sharp-sight- 
edness and insubordination, moved Dr. Rider 
with a sharp prevailing inclination, intensi- 
fying by times almost into action, to whip 
them all round, and, banish the intolerable 
brats out of sight. Such was his unpaternal 
way of contemplating the rising hopes of his 
house. How Nettie could bear it all, was 
an unceasing marvel to the doctor. Yet, in 
spite of these disagreeables, he w'ent to St* 
Roque’s all the same. 

One of these winter evenings the doctor 
wended his way to St. Roque’s Cottage in a 
worse frame of mind than usual. It w'as a 
clear frosty night, very pleasant to be out 
in, though sharp and chill ; such a night as 
brightens young eyes, and exhilarates.young 
hearts, when all is w’ell with them. Young 
Rider could hear his own foo^teps echoing 
along the hard frost-bound road, and could 
not but wonder in himself, as he drew near 
the group of buildings which broke the sol- 
itude of the way, whether Nettie too might 
hear it, and perhaps recognize the familiar 
step. The shadow of St. Roque’s fell cold 
over him as he passed. Just from that spot 
the light in the parlor window' of the cot- 
tage became percep'tible to the wayfarer. A 
shadow crossed the blind as he came in sight 
— Nettie unquestionably. It occurred to 
Dr. Rider to remember with very sharp dis- 
tinctness at that moment, how Nettie’s little 
shadow had dropped across the sunshine that 
first morning when he saw her in his own 
room. He quickened his step unaw^ares— 
perhaps to-night Nettie might be more ac- 
cessible than usual, less shut in and sur- 


52 

rounded with her family, 
himself, as he went past^ the willows, which 
rustled faintly with their long bare branches 
ill the night air, that perhaps, as he was 
later than usual, Fred might have retired to 
his den up-stairs ; and Susan might have 
gone to bear Fred company — who knows ? 
and the children might be in bed, the dread- 
ful little imps. And for once a half-hour’s 
talk with the strange little head of the house 
might comfort the young doctor’s fatigued 
mind and troubled heart. 

For he was sadly fatigued and worn out. 
What with incessant occupation and dis- 
tracted thoughts this year had been a very 
exhausting one for the doctor. He had 
fagged on through the whole summer and 
autumn without any relaxation. H^ had 
chafed over Fred’s presence for half of the 
year, and had been occupied for the other 
half with matters still more absorbing and 
exciting. Even now his mind was in a per- 
petual ferment, and no comforting spirit 
spoke quietness to his soul — no stout heart 
strengthened his — no lively intelligence ani- 
mated his own to worthy doings. He was 
very cross and fretful, and knew himself to 
be so that particular evening — worried and 
in want of rest. What a chance, if perhaps 
he found Nettie, whose very provocations 
were somehow more interesting than other 
people’s most agreeable and tranquillizing 
efforts, all alone and at leisure ! He went 
on with some palpitations of hope. As soon 
as he had entered the cottage, however, he 
found out the delusion he was under. The 
children w-ere the first fact that presented it- 
self to his senses ; an uproar that pervaded 
the house, a novel tumult waking all the 
echoes ; glimpses of flying figures pursuing 
each other with brushes and mops, and other 
impromptu weapons ; one astride upon the 
banisters of the stairs, sliding down from 
top to bottom ; another clinging now and 
then, in the pauses of the conflict, to the top 
of one of the doors, by which it swung back 
and forward. Terrible infants ! there they 
all were in a complete saturnalia, the door 
of the parlor half open all the time, and no 
sound of Nettie’s restraining voice. Only 
poor Mrs. Smith standing helpless, in suc- 
cessions of fright and exasperation, some- 
times alarmed for life and limb, sometimes 
ready to give the little wretches over to all 
the penalties of poetic justice. The poor 


woman brightened a little when she per- 
ceived the sympathetic horror on the doc- 
tor’s face. 

“ How’s this ? ” exclaimed young Bider 
with a sigh of dismay. Alas ! however it . 
was, no quiet imaginary conference, 
soothing glimpse of Nettie, w'as practicable^-^ 
to-night. He grew sulky and ferocious un- “ 
der the thought. He seized the imp that * 
hung on the door, and set it down summarilyly; 
wuth a certain moral violence, unable to 
frain from an admonitory shake, which 
startled its sudden scream into a quaveringjf^ 
echo of alarm. “ Do you want to break your 
neck, sir ? ” cried the wrathful uncle. 

Bider, how'ever, had to spring aside almost*^ 
before the words w^ere uttered to escape the | 
encounter of a hearth-brush levelled at him 
by his sweet little niece. “ How is this, 
Mrs. Smith ? ” cried the startled visitor, with 
indignation, raising his voice sufficiently to | 
be quite audible through the half-open door, j 

“ Bless you, sir. Miss is gone out to tea ; | 

don’t say nothink — I don’t begrudge the 
poor young lady a bit of a holiday,” whis- 
pered the frightened landlady under her 
breath ; “ but I can’t never give in to it 
again. Their mamma never takes a bit of 
notice exceptin’ when they’re found fault 
with. Lord ! to think how blind some folks ] 
is when it’s their own. But the poor dear, I 
young lady, she’s gone out for a little pleas • i 
urc — only to Miss Wodehouse’s, doctor,” i 
added Mrs. Smith, looking up with a sudden c 
start to catch the stormy expression on the 
doctor’s face. ■ 

He made no reply to the troubled land- i 
lady. He pushed the children aside, and | 
made a stride into the parlor. To be sure, j 
if Nettie was not hero, what a charming op- < 
portunity to make himself disagreeable, and 
give the other two a piece of his mind ! Ed- < 
ward Bider was anything but perfect. He I 
decided on that expedient with an angry j 
satisfaction. Since he could not have Net- • 
tie, he w'ould at least have this relief to | 
his feelings, which was next best. | 

The room was full of smoke, which came | 
in heavy puffs from Fred’s pipe. He him- j 
self lay stretched on the little sofa ; Nettie’s i 
sofa — Nettie’s room — the place sacred in the 
doctor’s heart to that bright little figure, the 
one redeeming presence in this dismal house- 
hold. Mrs. Fred sat dawdling opposite her 
husband over some wretched fancy-work. 


THE doctor’s family. 
He pictured to 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


Eyes less predjudiced than those of Edward 
Rider might have imagined this a scene of 
coarse but not unpleasant domestic comfort. 
To him it was a disgusting picture of self- 
indulgence and selfish miserable enjoyment, 
c..uuist vice. The very tobacco which pol- 
luted the atmosphere of her room was bought 
with Nettie’s money ! Pah ! the doctor 
came in with a silent pale concentration of 
fury and disgust, scarcely able to compel 
himself to utter ordinary words of civility. 
His presence disturbed the pair in their 
stolen pleasure. Fred involuntarily put 
aside his pipe, and Mrs. Fred made a little 
movement to remove from the table the 
glass from which her husband had been 
drinking ; but both recollected themselves 
after a moment. The wife set down the 
glass with a little spiteful toss of her head, 
the husband, with that heated sullen flush 
upon his face, relighted his half-extinguished 
pipe, and put up again on the sofa the slov- 
enly slippered feet w'hich at Edward’s first 
appearance he had withdrawn from it. A 
sullen “ How d’ye doV ” was all the saluta- 
tion that passed between them. They felt 
themselves found out ; the visitor felt with 
rage and indignation that he had found them 
out. Defiant shame and resentment, spite- 
ful passion and folly, on one side, encoun- 
tered the gaze of a spectator outside whose 
opinion could not be mistaken, a known 
critic and possible spy. Little comfort could 
come from this strange reunion. They sat 
in uneasy silence for a few minutes, mutu- 
ally ready to fly at each other. Mrs. Fred, 
in her double capacity as a woman and a 
fool, was naturally the first to speak. 

“ Nettie’s gone out to tea,” said that good 
wife. “ I dare,say, Mr. Edward, we should 
not have had the pleasure of seeing you here 
had you known that only Fred and I were at 
home. It is very seldom we have an evening 
to ourselves. It was too great a pleasure, I 
suppose, not to be disturbed.” 

“ Susan, hold your confounded tongue,” 
said the ungrateful Fred. 

“lam sorry to disturb Mrs. Rider,” said 
Edward, with deadly civility. “ I was not 
aware, indeed, of the domestic enjoyment I 
was likely to interrupt. But if you don’t 
W'ant your boys to break their necks, some 
one ought certainly to interfere outside 
there.” 

“ That is exactly what I expected,” said 


Mrs. Fred. “ My poor children can’t have 
a little amusement, poor things, but some- 
body must interfere with it ; and my poor 
Fred — perhaps you have some fault to find 
with him, Mr. Edward ? Oh, I can see it in 
your looks ! so please take your advantage, 
no'jf that there’s nobody to be afraid of. I 
can tell you have ever so many pleasant 
things just on your lips to say.” 

“ I wish you’d mind your own business, 
Susan,” said her husband, who was not a 
fool. “ Look after these imps there, and let 
me and Edward alone. Nettie’s gone out, 
you understand. She’s a wonderful creature, 
to be sure, but it’s a blessed relief to get rid 
of her for a little. A man can’t breathe un- 
der her sharp eyes,” said Fred, half apolo- 
getic, half defiant, as he breathed out a pufi 
of smoke. 

Edward Rider stared at his brother, speech- 
less with rage and indignation. He could 
have rushed upon that listless figure, and 
startled the life half out of the nerveless 
slovenly frame. The state of mingled re- 
sentment, disappointment, and disgust he 
was in, made every particular of this aggra- 
vating scene tell more emphatically. To see 
that heavy vapor obscuring those walls which 
breathed of Nettie — to think of this one lit- 
tle centre of her life, which always hitherto 
had borne in some degree the impress of her 
womanly image, so polluted and vulgarized, 
overpowered the young man’s patience. Yet 
perhaps he of all men in the world had least 
right to interfere. 

“ How is it possible,” burst forth the doc- 
tor all at once, “ that you can live upon that 
creature, Fred ? If you have the heart of a 
mouse in that big body of yours — if you are 
not altogether lost and degraded, how can 
you do it ? And, by Jove, when all is done, 
to go and fill the only room she has — the 
only place you have left her — with this 
disgusting smoke and noise as soon as her 
back is turned. Good Heaven ! it sickens 
one to think of it. A fellow like you, as 
strong as any hodman, to let such a creature 
sacrifice herself to keep him in bread ; and 
the only bit of a little place she can sit down 
in when she comes home — it’s too much, you 
know — it’s more than she ought to bear.” 

“And who are you, to meddle with us and 
our arrangements ? ” cried Mrs. Fred. “ My 
husband is in his own house. You would 
not take us into your house, Mr, Edward — ” 


54 


THE doctor’s family. 


“Hold your confounded tongue, I tell 
you,” said Fred, slowly gatliering himself off 
the sofa. “ You’re a pretty fellow to speak, 
you are — that wouldn’t lend a fellow a shil- 
ling to keep him from ruin. You had better 
remember where you are — in — in — as Susan 
says — my own house.” 

What outbreak of contempt might have 
come from the doctor’s lips was fortunately 
lost at that moment, since a louder outcry 
than usual from outside, the screams of the 
children, and the wailings of the landlady, 
at length roused the mother to the length of 
going to the door. When she was gone the 
two brothers eyed each other threateningly. 
Fred, not Avithout a certain intolerable sen- 
sation of shame, rose to knock his pipe upon 
the mantel-shelf among Nettie’s pretty girl- 
ish ornaments. Somehow these aggrava- 
tions of insult to her image drove Edward 
Rider desperate. He laid his hand on Fred’s 
shoulder and shook him violently. 

“ Wake up ! can’t you wake up and see 
what you’re about ? ” cried the doctor ; “can’t 
you show a little respect for her, at least ! 
Look here, Fred Rider. I knew you could 
do anything shabby or mean, if it suited you. 
I knew you Avould consent to hang a burden 
on anybody that would take such a weight 
upon them ; but, by Jove, I did not think 
you had the heart to insult her, after all A 
man can’t stand by and see that. Clear off 
your pipe and.your brandy before she comes, 
or, as sure as I am made of flesh and blood, 
and not cast-iron — ” 

The doctor’s threats w'ere interrupted by 
the entrance of a woful procession. Into 
the presence of the two brothers, eying 
each other with such lowering faces, Mrs. 
Smith and her husband entered, carrying 
between them, with solemn looks, the un- 
conscious Freddy, while his mother followed 
screaming, and his little brother and sister 
staring open-mouthed. It was some relief 
to the doctor’s feelings, in the excitement of 
the moment, to rush to the window and 
throw it open, admitting a gust of chill De- 
cember air, penetrating enough to search to 
the bones of the fireside loiterer. Fred Avas 
father enough to turn Avith anxiety to the 
child. But his trembling nervous fingers 
and bemused eyes could make nothing of the 
“ case ” thus so suddenly brought before 
him. He turned fiercely and vacantly upon 
his \»ife, and demanded why everything Avas ‘ 


suffered to go to ruin when Nettie was away. 
Mrs. Fred, screaming and terrified, began to 
recriminate. The pallid figure of the child 
on the table gave a certain air of squalid 
tragedy to the scene, through the midst of 
which the night air, coming in with a rush, 
chilling the group in their indoor dresses, 
and flickering the flame of the candles, 
added one other point of dismal accumula- 
tion to all its sordid miseries. The child had 
dropped from his swing on the door and AV'as 
stunned by the fall. Both father and mother 
thought him dead in the excitement of the 
moment; but the accustomed and cooler 
eyes of the doctor perceived the true state 
of affairs. EdAvard Rider forgot his disgust 
and rage as he devoted himself to the little 
patient — not that he loved the child more, 
but that the habits of his profession were 
strong upon him. When he had succeeded 
in restoring the little fellow to consciousness, 
the doctor threw a professional glance of in- 
quiry round him to see who could be trusted. 
Then, with a contemptuous shrug of his 
shoulders and impatient exclamation, turned 
back to the table. Fred, shivering and help- 
less, stood by the fire, uttering confused di- 
rections, and rubbing miserably his own 
flabby hands ; his wife, crying, scolding, and 
incapable, stood at the end of the table, of- 
fering no assistance, buf Avondering when 
ever Nettie Avould come back. Dr. Rider 
took the patient in his arms, and, beckon- 
ing Mrs. Smith to go before him, carried the 
child up-stairs. There the good mistress of 
the cottage listened to all his directions, and 
promised devoutly to obey him — to keep the 
room quiet, if she could — to tell everything 
he had said to Miss Nettie. He did not en- 
ter the desecrated parlor again Avhen he 
came down-stairs. What AA’as the use ? He 
was glad to go out and escape the chance of 
a fraternal struggle. He wont out into the 
cold night air all thrilling Avith excitement 
and agitation. It was not wonderful that a 
scene so strange should rouse many impa- 
tient thoughts in the young man’s mind ; 
but the most intolerable of these had the 
most trifling origin’ That Fred should have 
smoked his pipe in Nettie’s sitting-room, 
Avhen she Avas out of the AV’ay, Avas not, after 
all, considering Fred’s character, a very avou- 
derful circumstance, but it exasperated hia 
brother to a greater extent than much more 
important matters. That aggravation en- 


I 


CHRONICLES OF 
tirely overpowered Edward Rider’s self-con- 
trol. It seemed the culmination of all ihe 
wrong and silent insolent injury indicted upon 
Nettie. lie saw the stain of these ashes on 
the little mantel-shelf, the rolling cloud of 
smoke in the room, and indignation burned 
yet higher and higher in his breast. 

When the current of his thoughts was 
suddenly checked and stimulated by the 
sound of voices on the road. Voices, one 
of w'hich was Nettie’s, one the lofty, clerical 
accents of the Rev. Cecil Wentworth. The 
two were walking arm in arm in very confi- 
dential colloquy, as the startled and jealous 
doctor imagined. What were these two fig- 
ures doing together upon the road? why 
did Nettie lean on the arm of that hand- 
some young clerical coxcomb ? It did not 
occur to Dr. Rider that the night was ex- 
tremely dark, and that Nettie had been at 
Miss AVodehouse’s, where the curate of St. 
Roque’s was a perpetual visitor. AVith a 
mortified and jealous pang, totally unrea- 
sonable and totally irresistible, Edward Ri- 
der, only a moment before so fantastically 
extreme in Nettie’s defence — in the defence 
of Nettie’s very “ image ” from all vulgar 
contact and desecration — strode past Nettie 
now without word or sign of recognition. 
She did not see him, as he observed with a 
throbbing heart ; she was talking to young 
Mr. AVentworth with all the haste and 
eagerness which Dr. Rider had found so 
captivating. She never suspected who it 
w'as that brushed past her with breathless, 
exasperated impatience in the darkness. 
They went on past him, talking, laughing 
lightly, under the veil of night, quite indif- 
ferent as to who heard them, though the 
doctor did not think of that. He, unrea- 
sonably affronted, galled, and mortified, 
turned his back upon that house, which at 
this present disappointed moment did not 
contain one single thing or person which he 
could dwell on with pleasure ; and a hundred 
times more discontented, fatigued, and 
worn out — full of disgust with things in 
general, and himself and his own fate in 
particular— than he had been when he set 
out from the other end of Carlingford, went 
sulkily, and at a terrific pace, past the long 
garden-walls of Grange Lane, and all Dr. 
Majoribanks’ genteel patients. AVhen he 
had reached home, he found a message wait- 
iiig him from an urgent invalid, whose J 


CARLINGFORD. 55 

“ case ” kept the unhappy doctor up and 
busy for half the night. Such was the 
manner in which Edward Rider got through 
the evening — the one wonderful exceptional 
evening when Nettie went out to tea. 

CHAPTER VII. 

AATith the dawn of the morning, however, 
and the few hours’ hurried rest which Ed- 
ward Rider was able to snatch after his la- 
bors, other sentiments arose in his mind. It 
was quite necessary to see how the unlucky 
child was at St. Roque’s Cottage, and per- 
haps what Nettie thought of all that had 
occurred during her absence. The doctor 
bethought himself, too, that there might be 
very natural explanations of the curate’s es- 
cort. IIow else, to be sure, could she have 
got home on a dark winter night through 
that lonely road ? Perhaps, if he himself 
had been less impatient and ill-tempered, it 
might have fallen to his lot to supersede 
Mr. AVentworth. On the whole. Dr. Rider 
decided that it was necessary to make one 
of his earliest calls this morning at St. 
Roque’s. 

It was a foggy, frosty day, brightened 
with a red sun, which threw wintry ruddy 
rays across the mist. Dr. Rider drew up 
somewhat nervously at the little Gothic 
porch. He was taken up-stairs to the bed- 
room where little Freddy lay moaning and 
feverish. A distant hum came from the 
other children in the parlor, the door of 
which, however, was fast closed this morn- 
ing ; and Nettie herself sat by the child’s 
bedside — Nettie, all alert and vigorous, in 
the little room, which, homely as its aspect 
■was, displayed even to the doctor’s uniniti- 
ated glance a fastidious nicety of arrange- 
ment which made it harmonious with that 
little figure. Nettie was singing childish 
songs to solace the little invalid’s retirement 
— the “fox that jumped up on a moonlight 
night,” the “ frog that would a-Avooing go ” 
— classic ditties of which the nursery never 
tires. The doctor, who was not aw'are that 
music was one of Nettie’s accomplishments, 
stopped on the stairs to listen. And, in- 
deed, she had not a great deal of voice, and 
still less science, Nettie’s life having been 
too entirely occupied to leave much room 
for such studies. Yet somehow her song 
touched the doctor’s heart. He forgave 
her entu'ely that walk with the curate. He 


56 • THE doctor’s family. 


went in softly, less impatient than usual 
with her crazy Quixotism. A child — a sick 
child especially — was a bearable adjunct to 
the picture. A woman could be forgiven 
for such necessary ministrations — actually, 
to tell the truth, could be forgiven most follis 
she might happen to do, when one could have 
her to one’s self, without the intervention 
of such dreary accessories as Susan and 
Fred. 

“ Thank you very much for your care of 
this child last night. Dr. Edward,” said the 
prompt Nettie, laying down the large piece 
of very plain needlework in her hand. “ I 
always said, though you don’t make a fuss 
about the children, that you were quite to 
be relied on if anything should happen. 
He is feverish, but he is not ill ; and so long 
as I tell him stories and keep beside him, 
Freddy is the best child in the W'orld.” 

“ More people than Freddy might be will- 
ing to be ill under such conditions,” said the 
doctor, complimentary, but rueful. He felt 
his patient’s pulse, and prescribed for him 
with a softened voice. He lingered and 
looked round the room, which was very bare, 
yet somehow w^as not like any of the rooms 
in his house. How was it ? — there were no 
ornaments about, excepting that tiny little 
figure with the little head overladen with 
such a wealth of beautiful hair. The doctor 
sighed. In this little sacred spot, where she 
was so clearly at her post, — or at least at a 
post which no other was at hand to take, — 
he could not even resent Nettie’s self-sacri- 
fice. He gave in to her here, with a sigh. 

“ Since you think he is not ill to speak of, 
will you drive me and the other children into 
Carlingford, Dr. Edward ? ” said the cour- 
ageous Nettie. “ It will be a pleasure for 
them, you know', and I shall be able to do 
my business without losing so much time ; 
besides, I want to talk to you ; I can see 
you will in your eyes. Go down, please, 
and talk to Mr. Smith, who has got a head- 
ache or something, and wants to see you. 
You need not trouble yourself seeing Susan, 
who ^s cross, of course. I don’t wonder at 
her being cross ; it must be very shocking, 
you know, to feel one’s self of no use, what- 
ever happens. Thank you ; I shall be ready 
in a minute, as soon as you have done talk- 
ing to Mr. Smith.” 

The doctor w'ent down obediently, and in 
an unusual flutter of pleasure, to see the 


master of the cottage— -totally indifierent to 
the ailments of the virtuous Smith, and 
thinking only of Nettie and that drive to 
Carlingford, where, indeed, he should not 
have gone, had he considered the merely 
abstract matters of business and duty which 
led him entirely in a different direction. He 
was somew'hat rudely recalled to himself 
when he went down-stairs. Smith had no 
headache, but only wanted to speak to the 
doctor about his lodgers, whose “ ways ” were 
sadly discomposing to himself and his wife. 

“ You saw how it was yourself last night, 
sir,” sMd the troubled landlady. “ Them 
hangings — you know the smoke goes through 
and through them. After leaving all the 
windows open this frosty morning, and a 
draught enough to give you your death, the 
place smells like I don’t know what. If it 
wasn’t for Miss I wouldn’t put up with it 
for a day ; and the gentleman’s own room, 
doctor ; if you was just to go in and see it 
— just put your head in and say good-morn- 
ing — you’d believe me.” 

“I know all about it,” said the doctor; 
“ but Miss Underwood, Mrs. Smith ? ” 

“ There’s where it is, sir,” said the land- 
lady. “ I can’t find it in my heart to say a 
word to Miss. To see how she do manage 
them all, to be sure ! but for all that, doc- 
tor, it stands to reason as one can’t spoil 
one’s lodgings for a family as may be gone 
to-morrow — not except it’s considered in the 
rent. It’s more natural-like to speak to a 
gentleman like you as knows the world, 
than to a young lady as one hasn’t a word to 
say against — the handiest, liveliest, manag- 
ingest ! Ah, doctor, she’d make a deal dif- 
ferent a wife from her sister, that young 
lady would! though it isn’t my i)art to say 
nothink, considering all things, and that 
you’re relations, like ; but Smith and me are 
both o’ one mind about it, Dr. Rider — un- 
less it’s considered in the rent, or the gentle- 
man drops smoking, or — ” 

“ I hear Miss Underwood coming down- 
stairs,” cried young Rider. “Next time I 
come we’ll arrange it all. But not a word 
to her, remember — not a syllable ; and go 
up-stairs and look after that poor child, 
there’s a good soul — she trusts you while she 
is gone, and so do I. There, there I another 
time. I’ll take the responsibility of satisfy- 
ing you, Mrs. Smith,” said the doctor in a 
prodigious hurry, ready to promise anything 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD 


:n this incautious moment, and bolting out 
of their little dark back-room, which the 
local architect’s mullions had converted into 
a kind of condemned cell. Nettie stood at 
the door, all ready for her expedition to Car- 
lingford, with her two children, open-eyed 
and calmly inquisitive, but no longer noisy. 
Mrs. Fred was standing sulky at the parlor- 
door. The doctor took off his hat to her as 
he helped Nettie into the front seat of the 
drag, but took care not to approach nearer. 
The children w^ere packed in behind, under 
charge of the little groom, and, with an ex- 
hilarating sensation of lawlessness in the 
present pleasure. Dr. Rider turned his back 
upon his duty and the patient who expected 
him a mile on the other side of St. Roque’s, 
and drove, not too rapidly, into Cailingford. 

“ Mrs. Smith was talking to you of us,” 
said Nettie, flashing her penetrating eyes 
upon the confused doctor. “ I know she 
was — I could see it in her face this morning, 
and in yours when you came out of her room. 
Dreadful little dungeon, is it not ? I won- 
der what the man meant, to build such a 
place. Do they want to turn us put, Dr. 
Edward, or do they want more rent ? lam 
not surprised, I am sure, after last night. 
Was it not odious of Fred to go and smoke 
in the parlor, the only place we can have 
tidy? But it is no use speaking to him, 
you know ; nor to Susan either, for that 
matter. Married people do stand up for 
each other so when you say a word, however 
they may fight between themselves. But is 
it more rent that they want, Dr. Edward ? 
for I can’t afford more rent.” 

“ R is an abominable shame — you oughtn’t 
to afford anything. It is too dreadful to 
think of ! ” cried the angry doctor, involun- 
tarily touching his horse with his whip in 
the energy of the moment, though he was 
indeed in no hurry to reach Carlingford. 

“Hush,” said Nettie, lifting her tiny 
^ hand as though to put it to his incautious 
mouth, which, indeed, the doctor would not 
have objected to. “We shall quarrel on 
, that subject if you say anything more, so it 
is better to stop at once. Nobody has a 
right to interfere with me : this is my busi- 
ness, and no one else has anything to do with 
it.” 

“ You mistake,” cried the doctor, startled 
out of all his prudences ; “it ought to be 
my business quite as much as it is yours.” 


57 

Nettie looked at him with a certain care- 
less scorn of the inferior creature, “ Ah, yes, 
I dare say ; but then you are only a man,” 
said Nettie; and the girl elevated that 
pretty drooping head, and flashed a whole 
torrent of brilliant reflections over the som- 
bre figure beside her. He felt himself glow 
under the sudden radiance of the look. To 
fancy this wilful, imperious creature a meek, 
self-sacrificing heroine, was equally absurd 
and impossible. Was there any virtue at 
all in that dauntless enterprise of hers ? oi 
was it simple determination to have her owe 
way ? 

“ But not to quarrel,” said Nettie, “ for in- 
deed you are the only person in the wmiid ] 
can say a word to about the w'ay things are 
i going on,” she added, with a certain momen- 
tary softening of voice and twinkling of hex 
eyelid, as if some moisture had gathered 
there. “ I think Fred is in a bad way. ] 
think he is muddling his brains with that 
dreadful life he leads. To think of a man 
that could do hundreds of things living like 
that ! A woman, you know, can only ‘do a 
thing or two here and there. If it were not 
wicked to say so, one would think almost 
that Providence forgot sometimes, and put 
the wrong spirit into a body that did not 
belong to it. Don’t you think so ? When 
I look at Fred I declare sometimes I could 
take hold of him and give him a good shake, 
and ask him what he means ; and then it 
all seems so useless the very idea of expect- 
ing him to feel anything. I w^ant to know 
what you said to him last night.” 

“Not much — not half so much as I meant 
to have said. To see him polluting your 
room ! ” cried the doctor, with a flush grow- 
ing on his face, and breaking off abruptly, 
not quite able to conclude the sentence. 
Nettie gave him a shy upward glance, and 
grew suddenly crimson too. 

“Did you mind?” said Nettie, w'ith a 
momentary timidity, against the unexpected 
charm of which the unhappy doctor felt de- 
fenceless; then holding opt her tiny hand to 
him with shy frankness, “thank you for car- 
ing so much forme,” said the dauntless little 
girl, resolute not to perceive anything which 
could not be fully spoken out. 

. “ Caring so much ! I must speak to you ; 

we can’t go on like this, Nettie,” cried the 
doctor, folding fast the little unfaltering 
hand. 


58 THE doctor’s family. 


Oh, here is the place I am going to. 
Please don’t ; people might not understand, 
— though we are brother and sister in a 
kind of a Avay,” said the little Australian. 
“Please, Dr. Edward, w^e must get out 
here.” 

For a moment Edward Rider hesitated 
with a wild intention of urging his horse for- 
ward and carrying her off anywhere, out of 
Carlingford, out of duty and practice and 
responsibility, and all those galling restraints 
of life which the noonday light and every- 
day sounds about, brought in with so entire 
a discord to break up this momentary hallu- 
cination. For half a minute only the doctor 
lingered on the borders of that fairy-land 
where time and duty are not, but only one 
ineffable moment always passing, never past. 
Then with a long sigh, the breath of which 
dispersed a whole gleaming world of vision- 
ary delights, he got down doggedly on the 
commonplace pavement. Ah, what a de- 
scent it was ! the moment his foot touched 
these vulgar flags, he was once more the 
hard-worked doctor at everybody’s com- 
mand, with a fretful patient waiting for him 
a mile beyond St. Roque’s; and all these 
dazzling moments, which had rapt the un- 
fortunate young fellow into another world, 
were so much time lost to the prose figure 
that had to help Nettie down and let her go, 
and betake himself soberly about his own 
business. Perhaps Nettie felt it a little dis- 
enchanting when she was dropped upon the 
bare street, and went into the common shop, 
and saw the doctor’s di’ag flash off in the red 
frosty sunshine with a darting movement of 
exasperation and impatience on the part of 
its aggravated driver. For once in her life 
Nettie felt disposed to be impatient with the 
children, wdio, unceremoniously ejected from 
their perch behind, were not in the most 
obedient frame of mind. The two young 
people possibly agreed in their mutual sen- 
timent of disgust with other people’s soci- 
ety just at that moment. However, there 
was no help for it. Dr. Rider galloped his 
horse to his patient’s door, and took it out 
of that unlucky individual, who was fortu- 
nately strong enough to be able to bear 
sharp practice. Nettie, when she had made 
her little purchases, walked home smartly to 
sing “ the fox jumped up on a moonlight 
night” to little Freddy in his bedroom. 
This kind of interlude, however, as all young 


men and maidens ought to be aware, answers 
much better in the evening, when a natural 
interval of dreams interposes between it and 
the common work of existence. Nettie de- 
cided, thinking on it, that this would never 
do. She made up her mind not to have 
any more drives with the doctor. There 
was no telling what such proceedings might 
lead to. They were distinctly incompatible 
with the more serious business of her life. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Such a parting, however, is sadly apt to 
lead to future meetings. Notwiths^tanding 
his smouldering quarrel "with Fred, which 
w^as always ready to burst out afresh. Dr. 
Rider would not give up coming to St. 
Roque’s. He came to some clandestine ar- 
rangement with Mrs. Smith, of which no- I 
body ever was aware, and which he himself 
was rather ashamed of than otherwise ; and ! 
he attended Freddy with the most dutiful 
exactness till the child was quite restored. 
But all this time Nettie put on a coat of 
armor, and looked so thoroughly unlike her- 
self in her unusual reserve and propriety, 
that the doctor was heartily discouraged, and I 
could go no further. Besides, it would not 
be positively correct to assert that — though i 
he would gladly have carried her off in the 
drag anywhere, to the end of the w’orld, in 
the enchantment of the moment — he was 
just as ready to propose setting up a new’ 
household, with Fred and his family hang- 
ing on to it as natural dependants. That 
was a step the doctor was not prepared for. 
Some people are compelled to take the prose 
concerns of life into full consideration even 
when they are in love, and Edward Rider 
was one of these unfortunate individuals. 
The boldness which puts everything to the 
touch to gain or lose was not in this young 
man. He had been put to hard encounters 
enough in his day, and had learned to trust 
little to chance or good fortune. He did not 
possess the boldness which disarms an ad- 
verse fate, nor that confidence in his own. 
powers which smooths down wounded pride, 
and accounts even for failure. He was, 
perhaps it is only right to say, not very ca- 
pable of heroism ; but he was capable of 
seeing the lack of the heroic in his own 
composition, and of feeling bitterly his own 
self-reproaches, and the remarks of the 
world, which is always so ready to taunt the 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


very cowardice it creates. After that mo- i 
ment in which he could have dared anything 
for her and with her, it is sad to be obliged 
to admit that perhaps Dr. Edward too, like 
Nettie, withdrew a little from that climax of 
feeling. Not that his heart grew colder or 
his sentiments changed ; but only that, in 
sight of the inevitable result, the poor young 
fellow paused and pondered, obeying the 
necessity of his nature. People who jump 
at conclusions, if they have to bear the con- 
sequences of folly often enough, are at least 
spared these preliminary heartaches. Dr. 
Rider, eager as love and youth could make 
him, was yet incapable of shutting his eyes 
to the precipice at his feet. That he de- 
spised himself for doing so, did not make 
the matter easier. These were the limits of 
his nature, and beyond them he could not 
pass. 

Accordingly matters went on in this dan- 
gerous fashion for many weeks longer. The 
fire smouldered, strengthening its pent-up 
flames. Day by day malicious sprites of 
thought went out behind Dr. Rider in his 
drag, leading him into the wildest calcu- 
lations, the most painful complication of 
schemes. If Fred and his family could only 
be persuaded to return to Australia, his 
brother thought — if any bribe within Ed- 
ward’s means could tempt the ruined man to 
such a step ; and when he was there, why 
there was Providence to take care of the 
helpless unlovely household, and necessity 
might compel the wretched father to work 
for his children. Such were the vain proj- 
ects that revolved and fermented through 
the doctor’s agitated brain as he went among 
his patients. Luckily he had a very favor- 
able and well-disposed lot of sick people at 
that crisis — they all got well in spite of the 
doctor, and gave their own special cases and 
his anxiety all the credit for his grave looks; 
and all these half-finished streets and rough 
new roads in the east end of Carlingford 
were sown thick with the bootless sugges- 
tions of Dr. Rider’s love and fears. The 
crop did not show upon the vulgar soil, but 
gave lurking associations to every half-built 
street-corner which he passed in his rounds 
many a day after, and served at this present 
momentous era to confuse doubly the chaos 
of his thoughts. 

At last one night the crisis came. Spring 
had begun to show faintly in the lengthen- 


59 

ing days — spring, that so often belies itself, 
and comes with a serpent’s tooth. Dr. Rider 
on that particular day had met Dr. Marjor?- 
banks at some meeting convened in the in- 
terests of Carlingford. The old physician 
had been very gracious and cordial to the 
young one — had spoken of his own declin- 
ing health, of his possible retirement, of the 
excellent prospects w'hich a rising young 
man in their profession had in Carlingford ; 
and, finally, had asked Dr. Rider to go with 
him next day to see an interesting patient, 
and advise as to the treatment of the case. 

The young doctor was more pleased than 
he could or would have told any one ; and, 
with a natural impulse, seized the earliest 
moment to direct his steps towards St. 
Roque’s. 

It was twilight when Dr. Edward w'ent 
down the long and rather tiresome line of 
Grange Lane. These garden-walls, so de- 
licious in their bowery retirements within, 
were not interesting outside to the pedes- 
trian. But the doctor’s attention w'as so 
speedily riveted on two figures eagerly talk- 
ing near Mr. Wodehouse’s garden-door, that 
the long sweep of wall seemed but a single 
step to him as he hurried along. These two 
figures were unquestionably Nettie for one, 
and Mr. Wentworth for another. Handsome 
young coxcomb, with all his Puseyitical pre- 
tences ! Was Lucy AVodehouse not enough 
for him, that he must have Nettie too ? Dr. 
Rider hurried forward to interrupt that 
meeting. He was actually turning with her, 
walking slowly back again the very way he 
had just come ! Edw’ard’s blood boiled in 
his impatient veins. He swept along in a 
whirlwind of sudden w^ath. AVhen he came 
up to them Nettie was talking low, and the 
curate’s lofty head was bent to hear her in a 
manner which, it is probable, Lucy AVode- 
house would no more have admired than 
Edward Rider. They came to a sudden 
pause, when he joined them, in that partic- 
ular conversation. The doctor’s dread civil- 
ity did not improve matters. AVithout ask- 
ing himself what cause he had, this amiable 
young man plunged into the wildest jeal- 
ousy without pause or interval. He be- 
stowed upon Nettie the most cutting looks, 
the most overwhelming politenesses. AATien 
the three had marched solemnly abreast 
down the road for some few minutes, the 
curate, perhaps with an intuition of fellow- 


0Q the doctor’s family. 


feeling, perceiving how the matter was, 
stopped short and said good-by. “ I will 
make inquiries, and let you know next time 
I pass the cottage,” said Mr. Wentworth; 
and he and the doctor took off their hats, 
not without deadly thoughts on one side at 
least. When the young clergyman left them, 
Nettie and her sulky cavalier went on in si- 
lence. That intrepid little woman was not 
in her usual spirits, it appeared. She had 
no talk for Dr. Edward, any more than he 
had for her. She carried a multiplicity of 
little parcels in her hands, and walked with 
a certain air of fatigue. The doctor walked 
on, stealing silent looks at her, till his heart 
melted. But- the melting of his heart dis- 
played itself characteristically. He would 
not come down from his elevation without 
suffering her to see how angry he w’as. 

“ I fear I interrupted an interesting con- 
versation — I that have so little hope of 
equalling Mr. Wentworth. Priests are’ al- 
ways infallible with women,” said the doc- 
tor, betraying his ill-temper in vulgar sneers. 

“ I was asking him for some one to teach 
the boys,” said Nettie. “ Johnnie ought to 
have his education attended to now. Mr. 
Wentworth is very good-tempered, Dr. Ed- 
ward. Though he was just going to knock 
at Miss Wodchouse’s door when I met him, 
he offered, and would have done it if you had 
not come up, to walk home with me. Not 
that I wanted anybody to walk home with 
me ; but it was very kind,” said Nettie, with 
rising spirit. 

“lam afraid I am a very poor substitute 
for Mr. Wentworth,” said the jealous doctor, 
“ and I don’t pretend to be kind. But I am 
surprised to find Miss Underwood walking 
so late. This is not a road for a lady by 
herself.” 

“You know I don’t mind in the least for 
the road,” said Nettie, with a little indigna- 
tion. “ How wonderfully cross you are 
sometimes ! If you are going as far as the 
cottage,” she added, with a little sigh of fa- 
tigue, “ will you please carry some of these 
things for me ? I could not get out sooner, 
I have been so busy to-day. It is wonder- 
ful how much needlework it takes to keep 
three children going, and how many little 
jobs there are to do. If you take this par- 
cel, carry it carefully, please : it is some- 
thing for my bonnet. There ! Don’t be 


absurd. I am quite able to walk by myself, 
thank you— I’d rather, please ! ” 

This remonstrance was called forth by the 
fact that the relenting doctor, much moved 
by having the parcels confided to his care, 
had drawn the little hand which gave them 
within his arm, a proceeding which Nettie 
distinctly disapproved of. She withdrew 
her hand quietly, and walked on with much 
dignity by his side. 

“ I can carry your parcels,” said Edward, 
after a little pause, “ but you will not let me 
help yourself. You take the heaviest bur- 
dens upon your shoulders, and then will have 
no assistance in bearing them. How long 
are these children of Fred’s — detestable lit- 
tle imps ! — to work you to death ? ” 

“ Y’’ou are speaking of my children, sir ! ” 
cried Nettie, with a little blaze of resentment. 
“ But you don’t mean it. Dr. Edward,” she 
said, a moment after, in a slightly coaxing 
tone. “ You are tired and cross after your 
day’s work. Perhaps it will be best, if you 
are very cross, not to come down all the way 
to the cottage, thank you. I don’t want you 
to quarrel with Fred.” 

“ Cross ! Nettie, you are enough to drive 
twenty men distracted,” cried the poor doc- 
tor. “ You know as well as I do what I 
have been dying to say to you these three 
months past ; and to see you go on with 
these confounded children without so much 
as a glance for a fellow who — ” 

“ Don’t speak like that,” cried Nettie, wutli 
brilliant female instinct ; “ you’ll be sorry 
for it after ; for you know. Dr. Edward, you 
have not said anything particular to me these 
three months past.” 

This touch gave the last exasperation to 
the agitated mind of the doctor. He burst 
forth into a passionate outbreak of love and 
anger, curiously mingled, but too warm and 
real to leave Nettie much coolness of obser- 
vation under the circumstances. She took 
the advantage over him which a woman nat- 
urally does in such a case. She went on 
softly, trembling sufficiently to her own con- 
sciousness, but not to his, suffering him to 
pour out that torrent without interruption. 
She made no answer till the whole agitated 
self-disclosure was complete. In the inter- 
val she got a little command of herself, and 
was able to speak when it came to her turn. 

“Dr. Edward,” said Nettie, solemnly, 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


“ you know it is impossible. If we cared 
for each other ever so much, what could we 
do ? lam not free to — to make any change ; 
and I know very well, and so do you, that 
you never could put up with Fred and Su- 
san and the children, were things as you say 
ten times over. I don’t mean I don’t believe 
you. I don’t mean I might not have been 
pleased had things been different. But you 
know it is just plainly impossible. You 
know your own temper and your own spirit 
— and perhaps you know mine as well. No, 
no — we cannot manage it anyhow. Dr. Ed- 
ward,” said Nettie, with a little sigh. 

“ Is this all you have to say to me ? ” cried 
.the astonished lover. 

“ I am sure I do not know what else to 
say,” said Nettie, with matter-of-fact dis- 
tinctness. “ I don’t need to enter into all 
the business again, and tell you how things 
stand ; you know as well as I do. One may 
be sorry, but one must do what one has to 
do all the same.” 

A painful pause followed. Nettie, with 
all her feminine acuteness, could not divine 
that this calm way of treating a business 
which had wrought her companion into such 
a pitch of passion, was the most humiliating 
and mortifying possible to a man in whose 
•bosom love and pride were so combined. 
He tried to speak more than once, but could 
not. Nettie said nothing more — she was 
Uneasy, but secure in. the necessity of her 
own position. What else could she do or 
say ? 

“ Then, I presume, this is my answer,” 
said the doctor, at last gulping an amount 
of shame and anger which Nettie couM not 
conceive of, and which the darkness con- 
cealed from her sight. 

“ O Dr. Edward, what can I say ? ” cried 
the girl; “you know it all as well as I 
do. I cannot change it with a word. I am 
very, very sorry,” said Nettie, faltering and 
startled, waking to a sudden perception of 
the case all at once by reason of catching a 
sudden gleam of his eyes. They came to a 
dead stop opposite each other, she half 
frightened and confused, he desperate with 
love and rage and mortification. By this 
time they had almost reached the cottage 
door. 

“ Don’t take the trouble to be sorry. I’ll 
—oh, I’ll get over it ! ” cried the doctor, with 
a sneer' at himself and his passion, which 


61 

came out of the bitterness of his heart. Then> 
after a pause — “ Nettie ! ” cried the young 
man — “ Nettie ! do you see what you are do- 
ing ? — do you choose Fred and those wretch- 
ed imps instead of your own life and mine ? 
You are not so indifferent as you think you 
are. We will never get over it, neither you 
nor me. Nettie, once for all, is this all you 
have to say ? ” 

“ K I were to say all the words in the lan- 
guage,” said Nettie, after a pause, with a 
breathless indistinctness and haste, “ words 
will not change things if we should break our 
hearts.” • 

The open door, with the light shining out 
from it, shined upon them at' that moment, 
and Mrs. Smith waiting to let the young 
lady in. Neither of the two dared face that 
sudden gleam. The doctor laid down his 
parcels on the step, muttering something, 
which she could not distinguish, into Net- 
tie’s agitated ear, and vanished back again 
into the darkness. Only now was Nettie 
awaking to the sense of what had happened, 
and its real importance. Perhaps another 
minute, another word, might have 'made a 
difference — that other word and minute that 
are always wanting. She gazed out after 
him blankly, scarcely able to persuade her- 
self that it was all over, and then went in 
with a kind of stupefied, stunned sensation, 
not to be described. Edward Rider heard 
the door shut in the calm silence, and swore 
fierce oaths in his heart over her composure 
and cold-heartedness. As usual, it was the 
woman who had to face the light and obser- 
vation, and to veil her trouble. The man 
rushed back into the darkness, smarting with, 
wounds which fell as severely upon his pride 
as upon his heart. Nettie went in, suddenly 
conscious that the world was changed, and 
that she had entered upon another life. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Another life and a changed world ! What 
small matters sometimes bring about that 
sudden disenchantment ! Two or three 
words exchanged without much thought — 
one figure disappearing out of the landscape 

and, lo ! all the prismatic colors have faded 

from the horizon, and blank daylight glares 
upon startled eyes ! Nettie had not, up to 
this time, entertained a suspicion of how dis- 
tinct a place the doctor held in her limited 
firmament — she was totally unaware how 


02 THE doctor’s FAMILY. 


mucli exhilaration and support there was in 
his troubled, exasperated, impatient admira- 
tion. Now, all at once, she found it out. It 
was the same life, yet it was different. Her 
occupations were unchanged, her surround- 
ings just what they used to be. She' had 
still to tolerate Fred, to manage Susan, to 
superintend with steady economy all the ex- 
penditure of the strange little household. 
The very rooms and aspect of everything 
was the same ; yet had she been suddenly 
transported back again to the Antipodes, 
life could not have been more completely 
changed to Nettie. She recognized it at 
once with some surprise, but without any 
struggle. The fact was too clearly apparent 
to leave her in any doubt. Nobody but her- 
self had the slightest insight into the great 
event which had happened — nobody could 
know of it, or offer Nettie any sympathy in 
that unforeseen personal trial. In her youth 
and buoyant freshness, half contemptuous of 
the outside troubles which were no match for 
her indomitable heart, Nettie had been fight- 
ing against hard external circumstances for a 
great part of her valorous little life, and had 
not hesitated to take upon herself the heavi- 
est burdens of outside existence. Such 
struggles are not hard when one’s heart is 
light and sound. With a certain splendid 
youthful scorn of all these labors and dradg- 
eries, Nettie had gone on her triumphant 
w^ay, wearing her bonds as if they were or- 
naments. Suddenly, without any premoni- 
tion, the heart had died out of her existence. 
A personal blow, striking wdth subtle force 
into that unseen centre of courage and hope, 
had suddenly disabled Nettie. She said not 
a word on the subject to any living creature 
— if she shed any tears over it, they w^ere 
dropped in the darkness, and left no witness 
behind ; but she silently recognized and un- 
derstood what had happened to her. It w^as 
not that she had lost her lover — it was not 
that the romance of youth had glimmered 
and disappeared from before her eyes. It 
was not that she bad ever entered, even in 
thought, as Edward Rider had done, into 
that life, glorified out of common existence, 
which the two could have lived together. 
Such was not the form which this extraor- 
dinary loss took to Nettie. It was her per- 
sonal happiness, wonderful wine of life, 
which had suddenly failed to the brave little 
girl. Ah, the diflerence it made ! Labors, 


disgusts, endurances of all kinds ! what 
cannot one undertake so long as one has that 
cordial at one’s heart? AVhen the endur- 
ance and the labor remain, and the cordial 
is gone, it is a changed world into which the 
surprised soul enters. This was what had 
happened to Nettie. Nobody suspected the 
sudden change which had passed upon every- 
thing. The only individual in the world 
who could have divined it, had persuaded 
himself in a flush of anger and mortification 
that she did not care. He consoled himself 
by elaborate avoidance of that road which | 
led/past St. Roque’s — by bows of elaborate 
politeness when he encountered her any- 
where in the streets of Carlingford — by tak- ' 
ing a sudden plunge into such society as was i 
open to him in the town, and devoting him- 
self to Miss Marjoribanks, the old physi- 
cian’s daughter. Nettie was not moved by 
these demonstrations, which showed her 
sway still undiminished over the doctor’s an- 
gry and jealous heart. She did not regard 
the petulant shows of ofiended indifference 
by which a more experienced young woman 
might have consoled herself. She had enough 
to do, now that the unsuspected stimulus of 
her life was withdrawn for the moment, to 
go on steadily without tanking any outward 
show of it. She had come to the first real 
trial of her strength and worthiness. And 
Nettie did not know what a piece of hero- 
ism she was enacting, nor that the hardest 
lesson of youthful life — how to go on stoutly 
without the happiness which that absolute 
essence of existence demands and will not be 
refused — was being taught her now. She 
only knew it was dull work just for the mo- 
ment — a tedious sort of routine, which one 
was glad to think could not last forever ; 
and so went on, the steadfast little soul, no 
one being any the wiser, upon that suddenly 
clouded, laborious way. 

It is sad to be obliged to confess that Dr. 
Rider’s conduct was nothing like so heroical. 
He, injured and indignant and angry, thought 
first of all of revenging himself upon Nettie 
— of proving to her that he would get over 
it, and that there were women in the world 
more reasonable than herself. Dr. Marjori- 
banks, who had already made those advances 
to the doctor which that poor young fellow 
had gone to carry the news of, not without 
elation of heart, on that memorable night, 
to St. Roque’s, asked Edward to dinner a 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. ' 63 


few days after ; and Miss Marjoribanks made 
herself very agreeable, with just that degree 
of delicate regard and evident pleasure in his 
society which is so soothing when one has 
met with a recent discomfiture. Miss Mar- 
joribanks, it is true, was over thirty, and by 
no means a Titania. Edward Rider, who 
had retired from the field in Bessie Chris- 
tian’s case, and whom Nettie had rejected, 
asked himself savagely why he should not 
make an advantageous marriage now, when 
the chance offered. Old Marjoribanks’ prac- 
tice and savings, with a not unagreeable, rath- 
er clever, middle-aged wife — why should he 
not take it into consideration ? The young 
doctor thought of that possibility with a cer- 
tain thrill of cruel pleasure. He said to him- 
self that he would make his fortune, and be 
revenged on Nettie. Whenever there was a 
chance of Nettie hearing of it, he paid the 
most devoted attentions to Miss Marjori- 
banks. Ready gossips took it up, and made 
the matter public. Everybody agreed it 
would be an admirable arrangement. “ The 
most sensible thing I’ve heard of for years — 
step into the old fellow’s practice, and set 
himself up for life — eh, don’t you think so ? 
— that’s my opinion,” said Mr. Wodehouse. 
!Mr. Wodehouse’s daughters talked over the 
matter, and settled exactly between them- 
selves what was Miss Marjoribanks’ age, and 
how much older she was than her supposed 
suitor, a question always interesting to the fe- 
male mind. And it was natural that in these 
circumstances Nettie should come to hear of it 
all, in its full details, with the various com- 
ments naturally suggesting themselves there- 
upon. What Nettie’s opinion w^as, however, 
nobody could ever gather ; perhaps she 
thought Dr. Edward was justified in putting 
an immediate barrier between himself and 
her. At all events, she was perfectly clear 
upon the point that it could not have* been 
otherwise, and that no other decision was 
possible to herself. 

The spring lagged on accordingly, under 
these circumstances. Those commonplace 
unalterable days, varied in nothing but the 
natural fluctuations of making and mending, 
— those evenings with Fred sulky by the fii*e 
— always sulky, because deprived by Nettie’s 
presence of his usual indulgences ; or if not 
so, then enjoying himself after his dismal 
fashion in his own room, with most likely 
Susan bearing him company, and the little 


maiden head of the house left all by herself 
in the solitary parlor, passed on one by one, 
each more tedious than the other. It seemed 
impossible that such heavy hours could last, 
and prolong themselves into infinitude, as 
they did ; but still one succeeded another in 
endless hard procession. And Nettie shed 
back her silky load of hair, and pressed her 
tiny fingers on her eyes, and went on again, 
always dauntless. She said to herself, with 
homely philosophy, that this could not last 
very long ; not with any tragical meaning, 
but w’ith a recognition of the ordinary laws 
of nature which young ladies under the pres- 
sure of a first disappointment are not apt to 
recur to. She tried, indeed, to calculate in 
herself, with forlorn heroism, how long it 
might be expected to last, and, though she 
could not fix the period, endeavored to con- 
tent herself with the thought that things 
must eventually fall into their natural condi- 
tion. In the mean time it was slow and te- 
dious work enough — but they did pass one 
after another, these inevitable days. 

One night Nettie was sitting by herself in 
the parlor busy over her needlework. Fred 
and his wife, she thought, were up-stairs. 
They had left her early in the evening — Su- 
san to lie down, being tired ; Fred to his or- 
dinary amusements. It was a matter of 
course, and cost Nettie no special thought. 
After the children went to bed, she sat all 
by herself, with her thread and scissors e:* 
the table, working on steadily and quietl) at 
the little garment she was making. Her 
needle flew swift and nimbly ; the sleeve of 
her dress rustled as she moved her arm ; 
her soft breath went and came : but for that 
regular monotonous movement, and those 
faint steady sounds of life, it might have 
been a picture of domestic tranquillity and 
quiet, and not a living woman with aches in 
her heart. It did not matter what she was 
thinking. She was facing life and fortune — 
indomitable, not to be discouraged. In the 
silence of the house she sat late over her nee- 
dlework, anxious to have some special task 
finished. She heard the mistress of the cot- 
tage locking up, but took no notice of that 
performance, and went on- at her work, for- 
getting time. It got to be very silent in the- 
house and without ; not a sound in the rooms 
where everybody was asleep ; not a sound 
outside, except an occasional rustle of the 
night wind through th6 bare willow-branches 


THE doctor’s family. 


64 

— deep night, and not a creature awake but 
herself, sitting in that intense and throbbing 
silence. Somehow there was a kind of pleas- 
ure to Nettie in the isolation which was so 
impossible to her at other hours. She sat 
rapt in that laborious quiet as if her busy 
fingers w'ere under some spell. 

When suddenly she heard a startled mo- 
tion up-stairs, as if some one had got up has- 
tily ; then a rustling about the room over- 
head, which was Susan’s room. After awhile, 
during which Nettie, restored by the sound 
to all her growing cares, rose instantly to 
consideration of the question. What had 
happened now ? the door above was stealth- 
ily opened, and a footstep came softly down 
the stair. Nettie put down her work and 
listened breathlessly. Presently Susan’s 
head peeped in at the parlor door. After 
all, then, it was only some restlessness of 
Susan’s. NettJ^e took up her work, impa- 
tient, perhaps almost disappointed, with the 
dead calm in which nothing ever happened. 
Susan came in stealthy, pale, trembling with 
cold and fright. She came forward to the 
table in her white night-dress like a faded 
ghost. “ Fred has never come in,” said Su- 
san, in a shivering whisper ; “ is it very late ? 
He promised he would only be gone an hour. 
Where can he have gone, Nettie, Nettie ? 
Don’t sit so quiet and stare at me. I fell 
asleep, or I should have found it out sooner ; 
all the house is locked up, and he has never 
come in.” 

“ If he comes we can unlock the house,” 
said Nettie. “When did he go out, and 
why didn’t you tell me ? Of course I should 
have let Mrs. Smith know, not to frighten 
her ; but I told Fred pretty plainly last time 
that we could not do with such hours. It 
will make him ill if he does not mind. Go 
to bed, and I’ll let him in.” 

“ Go to bed ! it is very easy for you to say 
so ; don’t you know it’s the middle of the 
night, and as dark as pitch, and my husband 
out all by himself?” cried Susan. “O 
Fred, Fred ! after all the promises you made, 
to use me like this again ! Do you think I 
cah go up-stairs and lie shivering in the 
dark, and imagining all sorts of dreadful 
' things happening to him ? I shall stay here 
with you till he comes in.” 

Nettie entered into no controversy. She 
got up quietly and fetched a shawl, and put 
it round her shivering sister ; then sat down 


again and took up her needlework. But Su- 
san’s excited nerves could not bear the sight 
of that occupation. The rustle of Nettie’s 
softly moving hand distracted her. “ It 
sounds always like Fred’s step on the way,” 
said the fretful anxious woman. “ O Net- 
tie, Nettie ! do open the end window and ^ 
look out ; perhaps he is looking for the light 
in the window's to guide him straight ! It is 
so dark ! Open the shutters, Nettie, and, 
oh, do look out and see ! Where do you 
suppose he can have gone to ? I feel such a 
pang at my heart, I believe I shall die.” 

“ Oh, no, you wdll not die,” said Nettie. 

“ Take a book and read, or do something. 
We know what is about the worst that will 
happen to Fred. He will come liome lilce 
that, you know, as he did before. We can’t 
mend it, but we need not break our hearts 
over it. Lie down on the sofa, and put up 
your feet and wrap the shawl round you if 
you wont go to bed. I can fancy all very 
well how it will be. It is nothing new, Su- 
san, that you should break your heart.” 

“ It’s you that have no feeling. O Nettie, 
how hard you are! I don’t believe you 
know what it is to love anybody,” said. Su- 
san. “ Hark ! is that some one coming 
now ? ” 

They thought some one was coming fifty 
times in the course of that dreadful linger- ' 
ing night. Nobody came ; the silence closed ; 
in deeper and deeper around the tw^o silent 
women. All the world — everything round ! 
about them, to the veriest atom — seemed 
asleep. The cricket had stopped his chirrup 
in the kitchen, and no mouse stirred in the 
slumbering house. By times Susan dozed 
on the sofa, shivering, notwithstanding her 
shawl, and Nettie took up her needlework 
for the moment to distract her thoughts. 
AVhen Susan started from these snatches of 
slumber, she importuned her sister with 
ceaseless questions and entreaties. Where ' 
had he gone? — where did Nettie imagine 
he could have gone ? — and oh, would she go 
to. the window and look out to see if any 
one was coming, or put the candle to the 
window to guide him, if perhaps he might 
have lost the way ? At last the terrible pale 
dawn come in and took the light out of Net- 
tie’s candle. The two looked at each other, 
and acknowledged with a mutual start that 
the night was over. They had watched ‘ 
these long hours through with sentiments i 


CHRONICLES OF 

very different ; now a certain thrill of sym- 
pathy drew Nettie nearer to her sister. It 
was daylight again, remorseless and uncom- 
promising, and where was Fred who loved 
the darkness? He had little money and 
less credit in the limited place where him- 
self and his story were known. What could 
have become of him ? Nettie acknowledged 
that there was ground for anxiety. She 
folded up her work and put out her candle, 
and promptly took into consideration what 
she could do. 

If you will go to bed, Susan, I shall go 
out and look for him,” said Nettie. “ He 
might have stumbled in the field and fallen 
asleep. Men have done such things before 
now, and been none the worse for itj If 
you will go and lie down. I’ll see after it, 
Susan. Now it’s daylight, you know, no 
■ great harm can happen to him. Come and 
lie down, and leave me to look for Fred.” 

“ But you don’t know where to go, and 
he wont like to have you going after him. 
Nettie, send to Edward,” said Susan ; “ he 
ought to come and look after his brother ; 
he ought to have done it all through, and 
not to have left us to manage everything ; 
and he hasn’t even been to see us for ever 
so long. But send to Edward, Nettie, it’s 
his business. For Fred wont like to have 
you going after him, and you don’t know 
where to go.” 

“ Fred must have me going after him 
whether he likes it or no,” said Nettie, 
sharply, “ and I shall not send to Dr. Ed- 
ward. You choose to insult him whenever 
you can, and then you think it is his busi- 
ness to look after his brother. Go to bed, 
and leave it to me. I can’t leave you shiv- 
ering here, to catch something, and be ill, 
and laid up for weeks. I want to get my 
bonnet on, and to see you in bed. Make 
haste, and come up-stairs with me.” 

Susan obeyed with some mutterings of in- 
articulate discontent. The daylight, after the 
first shock of finding that the night was 
really ^ver, brought some comfort to her 
foolish heart. She thought that as Nettie 
said “ no more harm ” could come to him j 
he must be sleeping somewhere, the foolish 
fellow. She thought most likely Nettie was 
right, and that she had best go to bed to 
consume the weary time till there could be 
something heard of him; and Nettie, of 
course, would find it all out. 

CnilONICLES OF CABLINGFOED. 


CARLINGFORD. 65 

Such was the arrangement accordingly. 
Susan covered herself up warm, and lay 
thinking all she should say to him when ho 
come home, and how she certainly never 
would again let him go out and keep it se- 
cret from Nettie. Nettie, for her part, 
bathed her hot eyes, put on her bonnet, and 
went out, quietly undoing all the bolts and 
bars, into the chill morning world, where no- 
body was yet awake. She was a little uncer- 
tain which way to turn, but no way uncer- 
tain of her business. Whether he had gone 
into the town, or towards the low quarter 
by the banks of the canal, she felt it diffi- 
cult to conclude. But remembering her own 
suggestion that he might have stumbled in 
the field, and' fallen asleep there, she took 
her way across the misty grass. It was still 
spring, and a little hoar-frost crisped the 
wintry sod. Everything lay forlorn and 
chill under the leaden morning skies — not 
even an early market-cart disturbed the 
echoes. When the cock crew somewhere, it 
startled Nettie. She went like a spectre 
across the misty fields, looking down into 
the ditches and all the inequalities of the 
way. On the other side lay the canal, not 
visible, except by the line of road that wound 
beside it, from the dead flat around. She 
bent her steps in that direction, thinking of a 
certain mean little tavern which, somehow, 
when she saw it, she had associated with 
Fred — a place where the men at the door 
looked slovenly and heated, like Fred him- 
self, and lounged with their hands in their 
pockets at noon of working-days. Some in- 
stinct guided Nettie there. 

But she had no need to go so far. Before 
she reached that place the first sounds of 
life that she had yet heard attracted Nettie’s 
attention. They came from a boat which 
lay in the canal, in which the bargemen 
seemed preparing to start on their day’s 
j ourney. Some men were leisurely leading 
forward the horses to the towing-path, while 
two in the boat were preparing for their 
start inside. All at once a strange cry rang 
into the still chill air — such a cry as startles 
all who can hear it. The men with -^the 
horses hurried forward to the edge of the 
canal, the bargemen hung over the side of 
their boat ; visible excitement rose among 
them about something there. Nettie, never 
afraid, was less timid than ever this morn- 
ing. Without thinking of the risk of trust- 


66 the doctor’s family. 


ing herself with these rude fellows alone, 
she went straight forward into the midst of 
them with a curiosity for which she could 
scarcely account j not anxiety, only a certain 
wonder and impatience, possessed her to see 
what they had here. 

What they had there? — not a man — a 
dreadful drowned image, all soiled and swol-' 
len — a squalid tragic form, immovable, never 
to move more. Nettie did not need to look 
at the dread, uncovered, upturned face. 
The moment she saw the vague shape of it 
rising against the side of the boat, a heap 
of dead limbs, recognizable only as some- 
thing human, the terrible truth flashed upon 
Nettie. She had found not him, but It. 
She saw nothing more for one awful mo- 
ment — heaven and earth reeling and circling 
around her, and a horror of darkness on her 
eyes. Then the cold light opened up again 
— the group of living creatures against the 
colorless skies, the dead creature staring and 
ghastly, with awful dead eyes gazing blank 
into the shuddering day. The girl steadied 
herself as she could on the brink of the 
sluggish current, and collected her thoughts. 
The conclusion to her search, and answer to 
all her questions, lay, not to be doubted or 
questioned, before her. She dared not yield 
to her own horror-or grief or dismay. Su- 


san sleeping, unsuspicious, in full trust of 
his return — the slumbering house into which 
this dreadful figure must be carried — oblit- 
erated all personal impressions from Nettie^s 
mind. She explained to the amazed group 
who and what the dead man was — where -he 
must be brought to — instantly, silently, be- 
fore the world was awake. She watched 
them lay the heavy form upon a board, and 
took off her own shawl to conceal it from 
the face of day. Then she went on before 
them, with her tiny figure in its girlish 
dress, like a child in the shadow of the rough 
but pitying group that followed. Nettie did 
not know why the wind went so chill to her 
heart after she had taken off her shawl 
She did not see the unequal sod under her* 
feet as she went back upon that dread and 
solemn road. Nothing in the world but 
what she had to do occupied the throbbing 
heroic heart. There was nobody else to do 
it. How could the girl help but execute the 
work put into her hand ? Thinking neither 
of the hardship nor the horror of such dread 
work ‘falling to her lot, but only this, that 
she must do it, Nettie took home to the un- 
conscious sleeping cottage that thing which 
was Fred Rider : no heavier on his bearers* 
hands to-day than he had been already for 
. years of his wasted life. 


THE doctor’s family. 


PART m. — CHAPTER X. 

When Nettie opened the door of the 
sleeping house, with the great key she had 
carried with her in her early dreadful expe- 
dition, there was still nobody stirring in the 
unconscious cottage. She paused at the 
door, with the four men behind her carrying 
shoulder-high that terrible motionless bur- 
den. Where was she to lay it ? In her own 
room, where she had not slept that night, 
little Freddy was still sleeping. In another 
was the widow', overcome by watching and 
fretful anxiety. The other fatherless crea- 
tures lay in the little dressing-room. No- 
where but in the parlor, from which Fred 
not so very long ago had driven his dis- 
gusted brother — the only place she had 
w'here Nettie’s own fe-minine niceties could 
find expression, and where the accessories 
of her own daily life and work were all ac- 
cumulated. She lingered even at that dread 
moment with a pang of natural reluctance to 
associate that little sanctuary with the hor- 
ror and misery of this bringing-home ; but 
when every feeling gave way to the pressure 
of necessity, that superficial one was not 
like to resist it. Her ( ompanions were not 
aware that she had hesitated even for that 
moment. She seemed to them to glide 
softly, steadfastly, without any faltering, 
before them into the little silent w'omanly 
room, w^here her night’s w'ork W'as folded 
tidily upon the table, and her tiny thimble 
and scissors laid beside it. What a heart- 
rending contrast lay between those domestic 
traces and that dreadful muffled figure, cov- 
ered from the light of day with Nettie’s 
shawl, which was now laid down there, Net- 
tie did not pause to think of. She stood 
still for a moment, gazing at it with a sob 
of excitement and agitation swelling into 
her throat ; scarcely grief— perhaps that was 
not possible— but the intensest remorseful 
pity over the lost life. The rude fellows 
beside her stood silent, not without a certain 
pang of tenderness and sympathy in their 
half-savage hearts. She took her little 
purse out and emptied it of its few silver 
coins among them. They trod softly, but 
their heavy footsteps were heard, notwith- 
standing, through ail the little house. Net- 
tie, could already hear the alarmed stirring 
up stairs of the master and. mistress of the 
cottage; and, knowing what explanations 
she must give, and all the dreadful business 


67 

before her, made haste to get her strange 
companions away before Mrs. Smith came 
down-stairs. One of them, however, as he 
followed his comrades out of the room, from 
some confused instinct of help and pity, 
asked whether he should not fetch a doctor ? 
The question struck the resolute little girl 
with a pang sharper than this morning’s 
horror had yet given her. Had she perhaps 
neglected the first duty of all, the possibil- 
ity of restoration ? She went back, without 
answering him, to lift the shawl from that 
dreadful face, and satisfy herself whether 
she had done that last irremediable wrong 
to Fred. As she met the dreadful stare of 
those dead eyes, all the revulsion of feeling 
which comes to the hearts of the living in 
presence of the dead overpowered Nettie. 
She gave a little cry of inarticulate momen- 
tary anguish. The soul of that confused and 
tremulous outcry was Pardon ! pardon ! 
What love was ever so true, what tender- 
ness so constant and unfailing, that did not 
instinctively utter that cry when the watched 
life had ended, and pardon could no longer 
come from those sealed lips ? Nettie had 
not loved that shamed and ruined man — 
she had done him the offices of affection, 
and endured and sometimes scorned him. 
She stood remorseful by his side in that first 
dread hour, which had changed Fred’s 
shabby presence into something awful ; and 
her generous soul burst forth in that cry of 
penitence which every human creature owes 
its brother. The tender-hearted bargeman 
who asked leave to fetch a doctor, drew near 
her with a kindred instinct — “ Don’t take 
on, miss^ — there’s the crowner yet — and a 
deal to look to,” said the kind rough fellow, 
who knew Nettie. The words recalled her 
to herself— but with the softened feelings of 
the moment a certain longing for somebody 
to stand by her in this unlooked-for extrem- 
ity came over the forlorn courageous crea- 
ture, who never yet, amid all her labors, had 
encountered an emergency like this. She 
laid the shawl reverently- back over that 
dead face, and sent a message to the doctor 
with lips that trembled in spite of herself. - 
“ Tell him what has happened, and say he 
is to come as soon as he can,” said Nettie ; 
“ for I do not understand all that has to be 
done. Tell him I sent you ; and now go— 
please go before they all come down-stairs.”. 

But when Nettie turned in again, after 


/ 


08 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


closing the door, into that house' so entirely 
changed in character by the solemn inmate 
who had entered it, she was confronted by 
the amazed and troubled apparition of Mrs. 
Smith, half-dressed, and full of wonder and 
indignation. A gasping exclamation of 
“ Miss ! ” was all that good woman could 
utter. She had with her own eyes perceived 
some of the “ roughs ” of Carlingford emerg- 
ing from her respectable door under Nettie’s 
grave supervision, and yet could not in her 
heart, notwithstanding appearances, think 
any harm of Nettie ; while, at the same 
time, a hundred alarms for the safety of her 
household gods shook her soul. Nettie 
turned towards her steadily, with her face 
pallid and her brilliant eyes heavy. “ Hush,” 
she said ; “ Susan knows nothing yet. Let 
her have her rest while she can. We have 
been watching for him all night, and poor 
Susan is sleeping, and does not know.” 

“ Know what ? — what has happened ? — 
he’s been and killed himself Oh, miss, 
don’t you go for to say so ! ” cried Mrs. 
Smith, in natural dismay and terror. 

“ No,” cried Nettie, with a long sigh that 
relieved her breast, “ not so bad as that, 
thank Heaven ; but hush, hush ! I cannot 
go and tell Susan just yet — not just yet. 
Oh, give me a moment to get breath ! For 
he is dead ! I tell you, Jiush!” cried Net- 
tie, seizing the woman’s hand, and wringing 
it, in the extremity of her terror for alarm- 
ing Susan. “Don’t you understand me? 
She is a widow, and she df‘es not know — 
her husband is dead, and ?ihe does not 
know. Have you no pity for her in your 
own heart?” 

“ Lord ha’ mercy ! bu<- wait till I call 
Smith,” cried the alarmed landlady, shrink- 
ing, yet eager to know the horribly interest- 
ing details of that tragedy. She ran breath- 
less up-stairs on that errand, while Nettie 
went back to the door of the parlor, reso- 
lutely locked it, and took away the key. 
“ Nobody shall go gazing and talking over 
him, and making a wonder of poor Fred,” 
said Nettie to herself, shaking off from her 
long eyelashes the tear which came out of 
the compunction of her heart. “Poor 
Fred ! ” She sat down on one of the chairs 
of the little hall beside that closed door. 
The children and their mother up-stnirs 
gtill slept unsuspicious ; and their young 
guardian, with a world of thoughts rising 


in her mind, sat still and pondered. The 
past was suddenly cut off from the future by 
this dreadful unthought-of event. She had 
come to a dead pause in that life, which to 
every spectator was so strangely out of ac-j^ 
cordance with her youth, but which was to*f! 
herself such simple and plain necessity as to 
permit no que*stioning. She was brought 
suddenly to a standstill at this terrible mo- 
ment, and sat turning her dauntless little 
face to the new trial before her, pale, but 
undismayed. Nettie did not deceive her- 
self even in her thoughts. She saw, with 
the intuitive foresight of a keen observer, 
her sister’s violent momentary grief, her 
indolent acceptance of the position after 
awhile, the selfish reserve of repining and 
discontent which Susan would establish in 
the memory of poor Fred: she saw how, 
with fuller certainty than ever, because now 
more naturally, she herself, her mind, her 
laborious hands, her little fortune, would 
belong to the fatherless family. She did 
not sigh over the prospect, or falter ; but 
she exercised no self-delusion on the subject. 
There was nobody but she to do it — nobody 
but she, in her tender maidenhood, to man- 
age all the vulgar tragical business which 
must, this very day, confirm to the knowl- 
edge of the little surrounding world the event 
which had happened-^nobody but herself to^ 
tell the tale to the widow, to bear all the 
burdens of the time. Nettie did not think 
over these particulars with self-pity, or won- 
der over her hard lot. She did not imagine 
herself to have chosen this lot at all. There 
was nobody else to do it — that was the sim- 
ple secret of her strength. 

But this interval of forlorn repose was a 
very brief one. Smith came down putting 
on his coat, and looking scared and bewil- 
dered ; his wife, eager, curious, and excited, 
closely following. Nettie rose when they 
approached her to forestall their questions. 

“ My brother-in-law is dead,” she said. 

“ He fell into the canal last night and was 
drowned. I went out to look for him, and 
— and found him, poor fellow ! Oh don’t, 
cry out or make a noise : remember Susan 
does not know ! Now, dear Mrs. Smith, I 
know you are kind — I know you will not 
vex me just at this moment. I have had 
him laid there till his brother comes. Oh, 
don’t say it’s dreadful! Do you think I 
cannot see how dreadful -it is ? but we must 


69 


THE doctor’s family. 


not think about that, only what has to be 
done. "When Dr. Edward comes, I will 
wake my sister ; but just for this moment, 
oh, have patience ! I had no place to put 
him except tliereJ’ 

“But, Lord bless us, he mightn’t he clean 
gone : he might be recovered, poor gentle- 
man ! Smith can run for Dr. Marjoribanks ; 
he’s nearer nor Dr. Eider,” cried the curious 
excited landlady, with her hand upon the 
locked door. 

Nettie made no answer. She took them 
into the room in solemn silence, and showed 
them the stark and ghastly figure, for which 
all possibilities had been over in the dark 
midnight waters hours ago. The earliest 
gleam of sunshine came shining in at that 
moment through the window which last night 
Nettie had opened that Fred might see the 
light in it and be guided home. It seemed 
to strike like a reproach upon that quick- 
throbbing, impatient heart, which felt as a 
sin against the dead its own lack of natural 
grief and afiection. She went hurriedly to 
draw down the blinds and close out the un- 
welcome light. “ Now he is gone, nobody 
shall slight or scorn him,” said Nettie to 
herself, with hot tears ; and she turned the 
wondering dismayed couple — already awak- 
ening out of their first horror to think of 
the injury done to their house and “ lodg- 
ings,” and all the notoriety of an inquest — 
out of the room, and locked the door upon 
the unwilling owners, whom nothing but her 
resolute face prevented from bursting forth 
in selfish but natural lamentations over their 
own secondary share in so disastrous an 
event. Nettie sat down again, a silent little 
sentinel by the closed door, without her 
shawl, and with her tiny chilled feet on the 
cold tiles. Nettie sat silent, too much oc- 
cupied even to ascertain the causes of her 
personal discomfort. She had indeed enough 
to think of ; and while her little girlish fig- 
ure, so dainty, so light, so unlike her for- 
tunes, remained in that unusual stillness, 
her mind and heart were palpitating with, 
thoughts — all kinds of thoughts ; not only 
considerations worthy the solemnity and 
horror of the moment, but every kind of, 
trivial and secondary necessity passed 
through that restless soul, all throbbing 
with life and action, more self-conscious 
than usual from the fact of its outward still- 
ness. A hundred rapid conclusions and 


calculations about the funeral, the mourn- 
ing, the change of domestic habits involved, 
darted through Nettie’s mind. It was a re- 
lief to her to leap forward into these after- 
matters. The immediate necessity before 
her — the dreadful errand on which she must 
presently go to her sister’s bedside — the 
burst of wailing and reproachful grief which 
all alone Nettie would have to encounter 
and subdue, were not to be thought of. 
She bent down her little head into her hands, 
and once more shed back that hair which, 
never relieved out of its braids through all 
this long night, began to droop over her pale 
cheeks j and a quick sigh of impatience, of 
energy restrained, of such powerlessness as 
her courageous capable soul, in the very ex- 
cess of its courage and, capacity, felt in its 
approaching conflict with the feeble, foolish 
creature, who never could be stimulated 
out of her own narrow possibilities, burst 
from Nettie’s breast. But the sigh was as 
much physical as mental — the long-drawn 
breath of mingled weariness and restlessness 
— the instinct to be doing, and the exhaus- 
tion of long labor and emotion, blended to- 
gether. Thus she waited while the cold 
spring morning brightened, and Mrs. Smith 
went about her early domestic business, re- 
turning often into the little back parlor with 
the mullioned window, of which domestic 
Gothic treatment had made a condemned 
cell, to re-express her anxieties and horrors. 
Nettie had an instinctive consciousness even 
of Mrs. Smith’s grievance. She knew this 
dismal association would ruin “ the lodg- 
ings ; ” and as she realized, in the restless 
activity of her thoughts, that bond upon her 
to remain at St. Eoque’s, felt at the same 
time a longing rise within her to escape and 
flee away. 

All these crowding and breathless thoughts 
were a few minutes after reduced to abso- 
lute momentary stillness. It was by a step 
outside coming hastily with rapid purpose 
along the silent way. Nettie rose up to 
meet Edward Eider ; not as the angry lover 
still fiercely resentful of that rejection, which 
was no rejection, but only a bear and simple 
statement of necessity j not as the suitor of 
Miss Marjoribanks ; simply as the only crea- 
ture in the world who could help her, or to 
whom she would delegate any portion of her 
own hard but inevitable work. She opened 
the door before he had time to knock, and 


70 CHRONICLES OF 

held out her hand to him silently, quite un- 
awares betraying her recognition of his step 
— ^her comfort in his presence. That meet- 
ing flushed the doctor’s anxious face with a 
mingled shame and triumph not expressible 
in words, but left Nettie as pale, as pre-occu- 
pied, as much absorbed in her thoughts and 
duties as before. 

“ Dr. Edward, I should not have sent for 
you if I could have done it all myself,” 
said Nettie ; “ but I knew you would think 
it right to be here now. And I have Susan 
and the children to look to. I commit this 
to you.” 

“ Do they know ? ” said the doctor, tak- 
ing the key she gave him, and holding fast, 
with an instinct of compassion almost more 
strong than love, the little hand which never 
trembled. 

“ I will tell Susan, now that you have come 
— I could not before,” said Nettie, with an- 
other sigh. “ Poor Susan ! I was glad to let 
her sleep.” 

“ But there is no one to think whether you 
sleep or not,” cried Edward Rider. “ And 
those eyes have watched all night. Nettie, 
Nettie, could not you have sent for me sooner ? 
A word would have brought me at any mo- 
ment.” 

“You were not wanted till now,” said 
Nettie, not wdthout a touch of womanly 
pride. “ I have always been able to do my 
own work. Dr. Edward. But, now, don’t 
let us quarrel any more,” she said, after a 
pause. “You were angry once and I don’t 
wonder. Never mind all that, but let us be 
friends; and don’t let all the people and 
strangers and men who don’t belong to us,” 
cried Nettie once more, with hot tears in her 
eyes, “ be hard upon poor Fred ! ” 

The next moment she had vanished up- 
stairs and left the doctor alone, standing in 
the little cold hall with the key in his hand, 
and Mrs. Smith’s troubled countenance be- 
holding him from far. Edward Rider paused 
before he entered upon his dismal share of 
this morning’s work. Death itself did not 
suffice to endear Fred Rider to his brother. 
But he stood still, with a certain self-re- 
proach, to withdraw his thoughts, if he, 
could, from Nettie, and to subdue the thrill 
— the most living touch of life— which this 
meeting had stirred within him, before he 
entered that miserable chamber of death. 


CARLINGFORD. 

CHAPTER XI. , 

That dreadful day ebbed over slowly — ! 

tedious, yet so full of events and dismal 
business that it looked like a year rather 
than a day. The necessary investigations 
were got through without any special call [ 
upon Nettie. She spent the most of the day 
up-stairs with Susan, whose wild refusal to ] 
believe at first, and sullen stupor afterwards, 
were little differeht from the picture which 
Nettie’s imagination had already made. The 
children received the news with wondering 
stares and questions. That they did not un- j 
derstand it was little, but that they scarcely 
were interested after the first movement of j 
curiosity, disappointed and w'ounded the im- 
patient heart, W'hich unconsciously chafed at 
its own total inability to convey the feelings 
natural to such a terrible occasion, into any * 
bosom but its own. Nettie’s perpetual ac- 
tivity had hitherto saved her from this dis- i 
gust and disappointment. She had been 
bitterly intolerant by moments of Fred’s ' 
disgraceful content and satisfaction with his 
own indulgences, but had never pausefl to 
fret over what she could not help, nor con- 
trast her own high youthful honor and sense 
of duty with the dull insensibility around 
her. But to-day had rapt the heroic little 
girl into a different atmosphere from that 
she had been breathing hitherto. To-day 
she was aware that her work had been so far 
taken out of her hands, and acknowledged 
in her heart that it was best it should be so. 

She heard the heavy feet of men coming and 
going, but was not obliged to descend into 
immediate conflict with all the circumstances 
of so horrible a crisis. It was a new sensa- 
tion to Nettie. A year ago, perhaps, she 
would not have relinquished even that 
dreadful business to any one ; — to-day, the 
thought of having some one else who did it 
for her, and took comfort in relieving her 
burdened hands, fell with singular soothing 
power upon the heart which had come to a 
knowledge of its own weakness in these last 
tedious months ; and as Nettie sat up-stairs 
with all the remorseful thoughts of nature 
in her softened heart, the impossibility of 
impressing her own emotions upon those 
around her struck her with a deeper sense 
of impatience, disappointment, and disgust 
than ever before. When she went softly 
into the darkened room where Susan lay in 


THE doctor’s family. 71 


her 'gloomy bed, divided between wailings 
over the injuries which poor Fred had suf- 
fered, the harshness that had driven him out 
of doors, and the w'ant of his brother or 
somebody to take care of him, which had 
brought the poor fellow to such an end — and 
complaints of the wrong done to herself, the 
“ want of feeling ” shown by her sister, the 
neglect with which she was treated, Nettie 
gazed at the sobbing creature with eyes un- 
consciously wondering, yet but half surprised. 
She knew very well beforehand that this was 
how her dreadful tidings would be received ; 
yet out of her own softened, awed, com- 
punctious heart — her pity too deep for tears 
over that lost life — Nettie looked with the 
unbelief of nature at the widowed woman, 
the creature who had loved him, and been 
his wife — yet who could only think of some- 
body else to be blamed, and of herself in- 
jured, at that terrible moment when the 
companion of her life was violently with- 
drawn from her. And to go out of that ob- 
stinately darkened refuge of fretful sorrow, 
into the room where the blind had been 
drawn up the moment her back was turned, 
and where these three tearless children, to- 
tally unimpressed by the information which 
they had received as a piece of news with 
mingled curiosity and scepticism, occupied 
themselves with their usual sports, or lis- 
tened keenly, with sharp remarks, to the 
sounds below, which only the utmost stretch 
of Nettie’s authority could keep them from 
descending to investigate, afforded a wonder- 
ful reverse to the picture, which startled her 
in her momentary clear-sightedness. The 
contrast between her own feelings — she who 
had no bonds of natural affection to Fred, 
and to whom he had been, by times, a very 
irksome burden — and theirs, who were his 
very own, and belonged to him, appeared to 
Nettie as no such contrast had ever appeared 
before. Her heart alone was heavy with re- 
gret over the ruined man — the now forever 
unredeemable life : she only, to whom his 
death was no loss, but even, if she could 
have permitted that cruel thought to inter- 
vene, a gain and relief, recognized with a 
pang of compassion almost as sharp as grief, 
that grievous miserable fate. When, a few 
minutes after, the noise of the children’s 
play rose to an outburst, Nettie flushed into 
a momentary effusion of temper', and silenced 
the heartless imps with a voice and look 


which they dared not venture to resist. Her 
rebuke was, however, interrupted by a 
sudden call from their mother. “ How 
can you have the heart ? O Nettie, 
Nettie ! I knew you had no feeling ! — you 
never had any feeling since you were a 
baby — but how can you speak so to his 
poor children, now that he’s left them on the 
cold world ? ” cried Susan, sobbing from her 
bed. If Nettie sprang to her feet in sudden 
heat and disgust, and peremptorily closed 
the doors intervening between the children 
and their mother, nobody will much wonder 
at that movement of impatience. Perhaps 
Nettie’s eyes had never been so entirely 
opened to the hopeless character of the 
charge she had taken upon her, as in the 
temporary seclusion of that day. 

And meanwhile, down-stairs, Edward Ri- 
der was superintending all the arrangements 
of the time for Nettie’s sake. Not because 
it was his brother who lay there, no longer 
a burden to any man ; nor because natural 
duty pointed him out as the natural guar- 
dian of the orphaned family. The doctor, 
indeed, would have done his duty in such a 
hard case, however it had been required of 
him; but the circumstances were different 
now : the melancholy bustle, the shame, the 
consciousness that everybody knew what 
manner of existence this lost life had been, 
the exposure, the publicity— all that would 
have wrung with a hundred sharp wounds a 
spirit so susceptible to public comments — 
came with a dulled force upon the doctor’s 
mind to-day. When the people about saw 
the grave' and seemly composure with which 
he went about this dismal business, without 
those starts and flushes of grievous irrita- 
tion and shame which the very mention of 
his brother had once brought upon him, they 
believed, and honored him in the belief, that 
death had awakened the ancient fraternal 
kindness in Edward Rider’s heart. But it 
was not fraternal kindness that smoothed 
off the rude edges of that burden ; it w^as 
the consciousness of doing Nettie’s work 
for her, taking her place, sparing that crea- 
ture, over whom his heart yearned, the hard- 
est and painfulest business she had yet been 
involved in. We cannot take credit for the 
doctor which he did not deserve. He for- 
gave Fred when he saw his motionless fig- 
ure, never more to do evil or offend in this 
world, laid in pitiful solitude in that room, 


72 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


which still was Nettie’s room, and which 
even in death he grudged to his brother. 
But Edward’s distinct apprehension of right 
and wrong, and Fred’s deserts in this world, 
were not altered by that diviner compunc- 
tion which had moved Nettie. He forgave, 
but did not forget^ nor defend with remorse- 
ful tenderness his brother’s memory. Not 
for Fred’s sake, but Nettie’s, he held his 
place in the troubled cottage, and assumed 
the position of head of the family. Hard 
certainties of experience prevented the doc- 
tor’s unimaginative mind from respecting 
here the ideal anguish of sudden widow- 
hood and bereavement. This was a conclu- 
sion noways unnatural or surprising for such 
a life as Fred’s — and Edward knew, with 
that contemptuous hardness into which in- 
cessant personal contact with the world 
drives most men, that neither the wife nor 
the children were capable of deep or perma- 
nent feeling. “ They will only hang upon 
her all the heavier,” he said to himself, bit- 
terly ; and for her, with repentant love, Ed- 
ward Rider exerted himself. In all the 
house no heart, but Nettie’s alone, acknowl- 
edged an ache of pity for Fred and his ru- 
ined life. “ Mrs. Rider, to be sure, will 
feel at first — it’s only natural,” said Mrs. 
Smith ; ‘‘ but there wasn’t nothing else to be 
looked for ; and if it were not hard-hearted 
to say it, and him lying in his coffin, they’ll 
be a deal better off without him nor with 
him. But Smith and me, we have ourselves 
to look to, and it’s a terrible blow, is this, 
to a house as was always as respectable as 
ere a one in Carlingford. The lodgings is 
ruined ! The very marks of the feet, if it 
was nothing else ! ” cried the afflicted land- 
lady, contemplating the scratched tiles in the 
hall with actual tears of vexation and re- 
gret. But this was the true state of the 
case to every unconcerned spectator. Only 
Nettie, on whom the burden had fallen, and 
was yet to fall heaviest, felt the eyes which 
were hot and heavy with watching, grow 
dim with tears of unspeakable compassion. 
From the fulness of her youth and strength 
— strength so burdened, youth so dauntless 
and dutiful — Nettie gazed with a pity too 
deep for words at the awful spectacle of that 
existence lost. That the lifeless thing in 
the room below could have been a man, and 
yet have come p.nd gone so disastrously 
through the world, was terrible to think of. 


to that living laboring creature, in the depth 
of her own strange toils and responsibilities. 
Her heart ached over that wretched, miser- 
able fate. Neither toil nor anguish was to 
be compared to the dread loss of a life, sus- 
tained by that departed soul. 

CHAPTER XII. 

In a few days all tliis solemn crisis was 
over, and life went on again in its ordinary 
tame current, closing over the dishonored 
grave where Fred found his rest, hencefor- 
ward nameless in the W'orld that had sufiered 
his existence as a cumberer of the ground 
for so many years. Had he been the prop 
of his house and the light of their eyes, life 
would have gone on aga'in after that inter- 
ruption, all the same, w’ith a persistency 
which nothing can impair. As it w^as, the 
diminished household resumed its ordinary 
course of existence, after a very feAv days, 
with little more than outward marks of 
what had befallen them. It is true that 
Nettie sat down with a repugnance which 
she scarcely could either overcome or con- 
ceal, to dispense the domestic provisions at 
the table which shortly before had borne so 
dread a burden. But nobody thought of 
that except Nettie; and but for the black 
dresses and Susan’s cap, Fred was as if he 
had never been. 

About a week after the funeral, the doctor 
went solemnly to visit them in one of those 
lengthening spring afternoons. Dr. Rider 
was undeniably nervous and excited about 
this interview. He had been at home under 
pretence of having luncheon, but in realitv 
to make a solemn toilette, and wind himself 
up to the courage necessary for a settlement 
of affairs. As he dashed with agitated haste 
down Grange Lane, he saw Miss Wodchouse 
and her sister Lucy coming from St. Roque’s, 
where very probably they, too, had been 
making a visit of condolence to Nettie ; and 
a little nearer that scene of all bis cogita- 
tions and troubles appeared, a much less 
welcome sight. Miss Marjoribanks, wffiom 
all Carlingford, a month ago, had declared 
Dr. Rider to be “ paying his addresses ” to. 
The guilty doctor took off his hat to that 
stout and sensible wayfarer, with a pang of 
self-disgust which avenged Nettie. Along 
the very road where that little Titania, eager 
and rapid, had gone upon her dauntless wav 
so often, to see that comely, well-dressed 


THE DOCTOR^S FAMILY. 73 


figure, handsome, sprightly, clever — hut with 
such a world of bright youth, tenderness, 
loveliness, everything that touches the heart 
of man, between the two ! No harm to Miss 
Marjoribanks ; only shame to the doctor, 
who, out of angry love, pique, and mortifi- 
cation, to vex Nettie, had pretended to 
transfer the homage due to the fairy princess 
to that handsome and judicious woman. The 
experiment had failed as entirely as it de- 
served to do ; and here was Edward Rider, 
coming back wiser and humbler, content to 
put that question over again, and stand once 
more his chance of what his pride had called 
a rejection, perhaps content to make still 
greater sacrifices, if the truth were known, 
and to do anything Nettie asked him, if 
Nettie would but condescend to ask or enter 
into terms at all. 

He drew up before St. Roque’s with a 
dash, which was much more of agitation than 
display, and, throwing the reins at the head 
of his little groom, leaped out like a man 
who did not see where he was going. He 
saw Mr. Wentworth, however, coming out 
of the church, and turning round amazed 
to look what vehicle had come to so sudden 
a standstill there. All the world seemed to 
be on the road to St. Roque’s Cottage that 
spring afternoon. The doctor made a surly 
gesture of recognition as he passed the cu- 
rate, who gazed at him in calm astonishment 
from the church porch. No other intruder 
appeared between him and the Cottage. He 
hurried along past the willow-trees with 
their drooping tassels, surrounded by a cer- 
tain maze of excitement and agitation. As 
he went up to the door, it occurred to him 
suddenly how Nettie had recognized his step 
that dread morning of Fred’s death. The 
thought came like a stimulus and encourage- 
ment to the doctor. He went in with a 
brighter look, a heart more hopeful. She 
had opened the door to him before he could 
knock, held out to him that tiny morsel of a 
hand which labored so hard and constantly, 
said — what did Nettie say ? how many times 
had the doctor conned it over as he went be- 
tween his patients ? — “You were angry once, 
and, indeed, I don’t wmnder.” The doctor 
went boldly in under the cordial of these 
simple w’ords. If she did not wonder that 
he was angry once, could she think of saying 
over again that same conclusion which had 
cast him into such wrathful despair ? He 


went in to try his fortune a second time, 
secure of his temper at least. That could 
never fail, nor sin against Nettie again. 

Edward Rider went in, expectant some- 
how, even against his reason, to find an al- 
tered world in that house from which Fred 
had gone. He knew better, to be sure, but 
nature beguiled the young man out of his 
wisdom. When he went into the parlor his 
eyes were opened. Upon the sofa— -that 
same sofa where Fred had lain, all slovenly 
and mean in his idleness, with his pipe, pol- 
luting Nettie’s sole retirement — Mrs. Fred 
lay now in her sombre black dress, with the 
white cap circling her faded face. She had 
her w'hite handkerchief in her hand, and was 
carefully arranged upon the sofa, with a chair 
placed near for sympathizers. At the table, 
working rapidly as usual, sat Nettie. Some- 
times she turned a momentary glance of 
mingled curiosity and wonder upon her sis- 
ter. Evidently she did not interfere with 
this development of sorrow. Nettie had 
enough to do' besides with her needlework, 
and to enjoin a moderate amount of quiet- 
ness upon Freddy and his little sister, who 
were building wooden bricks into houses and 
castles on the floor by her side. When the 
doctor entered the room ho saw how it was 
with instantaneous insight. • Mrs. Fred was 
sitting in state, in the pomp of woe, to re- 
ceive all the compassionatepeople who might 
come to condole with her. Nettie, half im- 
patient, half glad that her sister could amuse 
herself so, sat in busy toleration, putting up 
with it, carrying on her own work through 
it all — and still, as always, those bonds of 
her own making closed hard and tenacious 
upon the prop of the house. Even the chance 
of speaking with her by herself died off into 
extreme distance. Young Rider, who came 
in with the full conviction thatfi*tenger could 
never more rise in his heart against Nettie, 
grew pale with passion, resentment, and im- 
patience before he had been a mjnute in the 
room. Always the same ! Not relieved out 
of her bondage — closer bound and prisoned 
than ever ! He took, with an impatient in- 
voluntary commotion, the chair placed be- 
side the sofa, and sat down in it abruptly 
with the briefest salutations. His hopes and 
anticipations all went bitterly back upon his 
heart. The very rustle of Nellie’s arm as 
she spread out that little black frock upon 
the table, and put on its melancholy trim- 


74 CHRONICLES 01 

mings, exasperated afresh the man who five 
minutes ago did not believe it possible that 
he ever could feel an impulse of displeasure 
against her again. 

“ I cannot say that I expected to see you, 
Mr. Edward,” said Mrs. Fred, lifting her 
handkerchief to her eyes ; “indeed, when I 
remember the last time you were here, I 
wonder you could think of coming near us. 
But now my poor dear Fred is gone, we have 
nobody to protect us — and of course you 
don’t mind how you hurt my feelings. If 
you had done your duty by my poor fellow 
when he was living, he might never — 
never — ” 

Here Mrs. Fred paused, choked by spite- 
ful tears. 

“Dr. Edward, don’t mind what Susan 
says,” said Nettie. “ It is very kind of you 
to come, after everything — If you would 
only tell the people not to take any notice, 
but just to let us go on as usual. They all 
want to be kind, you know — they keep com- 
ing, and asking 'what they can do ; and you 
understand very well there is nothing to 
do,” said Nettie, with a little pride. “ We 
are just as we were before — nothing is 
changed : one does not like to be unkind, 
but nobody needs to do anything. We shall 
get along all the same.” 

“ So it seems, indeed,” said Dr. Eider, 
with irrepressible bitterness ; “ all the same ! 
But, indeed, I came specially to ask what my 
sister-in-law meant to do,” continued the 
doctor, bent on one last appeal. “ Now that 
you are left to yourself, Mrs. Eider, what 
do you think of doing ? Of course you must 
have some plans about the children and 
your future life ? ” 

Mrs. Fred looked up at him with momen- 
tary alarm and dismay. She did not know 
what the qu^tion meant, but a certain vague 
terror seized her. It seemed to imply some- 
how that she was now to be left to her own 
resources. She gave a certain gasp of ap- 
peal to “ Nettie ! ” and took refuge once 
more in her handkerchief. The doctor was 
desperate — he had no mercy in him. 

“ Nettie ! always Nettie ! ” cried the young 
man. “And is it true, Nettie — is it all the 
same ? Are you always to go on toiling for 
the miserable comforts of other people ? 
WTiat is to become of us ? Have you sold 
yourself to this fate ? ” 

Nettie laid down the little black frock out 


CARLINGFORD. 

of her laborious hands. “ You have been 
up all night. Dr. Edward,” she said, with a 
certain tenderness, looking at his agitated 
face ; “ you are tired out and sick at the 
heart. I know it makes you say things you 
would not say ; but after all, you know, ex- 
cept poor Fred, whom none of you think of, 
everything is ihe very same. I cannot make 
it different — nothing can make it different. 
There is Susan plain enough to be seen — 
and there are the children. Sometimes it 
has come into my mind,” said Nettie, “ that 
as I shall never be able to afibrd a very good 
education for the children, it would be better 
to take them out to the colony again, where 
they might get on better than here. But it 
is a dreadful long voyage ; and we have no 
near friends there, or anywhere else ; and,’’ 
concluded the steadfast creature, who had 
dropped these last words from her lips sen- 
tence by sentence, as if eager to impress 
upon her own mind the arguments against 
that proceeding — “ and,” said Nettie, wdth 
wistful pathetic honesty, not able to deny 
the real cause of the reluctance altogether, 
“ I don’t seem to have the heart for it now.” 

Dr. Eider started up from his chair. He 
went to Nettie’s side with a sudden thrill 
of agitation and passion. He clasped the 
hand with which Nettie was smoothing out 
that little frock, and crushed the delicate 
fingers in his inconsiderate grasp. “ Nettie ! 
if you must carry them always upon your 
shoulders, cannot we do it together, at 
least ? ” cried the doctor, carried away be- 
yond every boundary of sense or prudence. 
He got down on his knees beside the table, 
not kneeling to her, but only compelling her 
attention — demanding to see the answer of 
her eyes, the quiver of her mouth. For that 
moment- Nettie’s defences too fell before this 
unlooked-for outburst of a love that had for- 
gotten prudence. Her mouth quivered, her 
eyes filled. If it were possible — if it were 

only possible ! They had both forgotten 

the spectators who gazed with curious eyes, 
all unaware how deeply their own fate -was 
involved j and that fate w'as still trembling 
in the breathless interval, when a vulgar fin- 
ger touched those delicate balances of possi- 
bility, and the crisis w’as over, perhaps never 
to return. 

“ Nettie ! ” cried Mrs. Fred, “ if Edward 
Eider has no respect for me, nor for my poor 
Fred — my poor, dear, injured husband, that 


THE doctor’s family. 75 


helped to bring him up, and gave up his 
practice to him, and died, as I might say, 
by his neglect — Nettie ! how can you be so 
cruel to your sister ? How’ can you go tak- 
ing his hand, and looking as if he were your 
lover ? You never had any feeling for me, 
though everybody thinks so much of you. 
And now I know what I have to expect. The 
moment my poor dear Fred’s head is laid in 
the grave — as soon as ever you have me in 
your own hands, and nobody to protect me ! 
— O my Fred ! my Fred ! — as soon as you 
are gone, this is how they are using your 
poor helpless family ! — and soon, soon I 
shall die, too, and you will not be encum- 
bered with me ! ” 

Long before this sobbing speech was con- 
cluded, Dr. Rider had risen to his feet, and 
was pacing through the little room w'ith hasty 
steps of disgust and rage, and an agitation 
which overwhelmed all his attempts to mas- 
ter it ; while Nettie sat supporting her head 
in her hands, pressing her fingers upon her 
hot eyes, beholding that fair impossible vis- 
ion break and disappear from before her. 
Nettie’s heart groaned within her, and beat 
against the delicate bosom which, in its ten- 
der weakness, was mighty as a giant’s. She 
made no answer to her sister’s outcry, nor 
attempted to comfort the hysterical sobbing 
into which Susan fell. Nettie gave up the 
hopeless business without being deceived by 
those selfish demonstrations. She was not 
even fortunate enough to be able to persuade 
herself into admiring love and enthusiasm 
for those to W’hom necessity obliged her to 
give up her own life. She said nothing; 
she knew that the sobs would subside, the 
end would be gained, the insignific^t soul 
lapse into comfort, and with a sigh of com- 
pulsory resignation Nettie yielded once more 
to her fate. 

“Dr. Edward, do not think of me any 
more,” she said, resolutely, rising and go- 
ing out to the door with him, in her simplic- 
ity and courage. “ You see very well it is 
impossible. I know you see it as well as I 
do. If w^e could be friends as we once were, 
I should be very, very glad, but I don’t think 
it is possible just now. Don’t say anything. 
We both know how it is, and neither of us 
can help it. If we could get not to think of 
each other, that would ‘be best,” said Nettie, 
with another sigh ; “ but in the mean time 


let us say good-by, and speak of it no 
more.” 

If the doctor did not take his dismissal 
exactly so — if Nettie’s identification of her 
own sentiments with his, did lead to a warmer 
tenderness in that farewell, which could not 
be final while such a bond united them, it 
was at least with an absolute conviction of 
the impossibility of any closer union that they 
parted. The doctor sprang into his drag 
and dashed away to his patients, plunging 
into the work which he had somewhat neg- 
lected during that exciting day. He was not 
without some comfort as he went about his 
business with Care behind him, but that very 
comfort embittered the pang of the compul- 
sory submission. To think he must leave 
her there with those burdens upon her deli- 
cate shoulders — to believe her his, yet not 
his, the victim of an unnatural bondage — 
drove Edward Rider desperate as he de- 
voured the way. A hundred times in an 
hour he made up his mind to hasten back 
again and snatch her forcibly out of that 
thraldom, and yet a hundred times had to 
fall back consuming his heart with fiery irri- 
tation, and chafing at all that seemed duty 
and necessity to Nettie. As he was pro- 
ceeding on his troubled way it occurred to 
him to meet — surely everybody in Carling- 
ford was out of doors this particular after- 
noon ! — that prosperous wife, Mrs. John 
Brown, who had once been Bessie Christian. 
She was a very pale apparition now to the 
doctor, engrossed as he was with an influ- 
ence much more imperious and enthralling 
than hers had ever been ; but the sight of 
her, on this day of all others, was not with- 
out its efiect upon Edward Rider. Had not 
she too been burdened with responsibilities 
which the doctor would not ve^ure to take 
upon his shoulders, but which another man, 
more daring, had taken, and rendered bear- 
able? As the thought of that possibility 
occurred to him, a sudden vision of Mrs. 
Fred’s faded figure flashed across his eyes. 
In the excitement of the moment he touched 
too sharply with his whip that horse which 
had suffered the penalty of most of his vaga- 
ries of temper and imagination for some time 
past. The long-suffering beast was aggra- 
vated out of patience by that unexpected ir- 
ritation. It was all that the doctor could do 
for the next ten minutes to keep his seat and 


76 CHRONICLES 01 

his command over the exasperated animal, 
whose sudden frenzy terrified Mrs. Brown, 
and drove her to take refuge in the nearest 
shop. How little the Carlingford public 
who paused at a respectful distance to look 
on, guessed those emotions which moved the 
doctor as they watched him subduing his 
rebellious horse with vigorous arm and pas- 
sionate looks ! Bessie, with a little palpita- 
tion at her heart, could not refrain from a 
passing wonder whether the sight of herself 
had anything to do with that sudden con- 
flict. Mrs. Brown knew little about St. 
Roque’s Cottage, but had heard of Miss 
Marjoribanks, who it was not to be supposed 
could hold a very absolute sway over the 
doctor. Meanwhile Dr. Rider struggled 
with his horse with all the intensity of deter- 
mination with which he would have strug- 
gled against his fate had that been practica- 
ble. With teeth set and eyes that blazed 
with sudden rage and resolution, he subdued 
the unruly brute, and forced it to acknowl- 
edge his mastery. When he drove the van- 
quished animal, all quivering with pain and 
passion, on its further course, the struggle 
had refreshed his mind a little. Ah, if life 
and adverse fortune could but be vanquished 
80 ! — but all Edward Rider’s resolution and 
courage died into hopeless disgust before the 
recollection of Mrs. Fred upon that sofa. 
Even with Nettie at one hand, that peevish 
phantom on the other, those heartless imps 
in insolent possession of the wonderful little 
guardian who would not forsake them, made 
up a picture which made the doctor’s heart 
sick. No ! Nettie was right. It w^as im- 
possible. Love, patience, charity, after all, 
are but human qualities, when they have to 
be held against daily disgusts, irritations, 
and miseries. The doctor knew as well as 
.Nettie did that he could not bear it. He 
knew even, as perhaps Nettie did not know, 
that her own imago would suffer from the 
association ; and that a man so faulty and 
imperfect as himself could not long refrain 
from resenting upon his wife the dismal re- 
straints of such a burden. With a self-dis- 
gust which was most cutting of all, Edward 
Rider felt that he should descend to that in- 
justice ; and that not even Nettie herself 
would be safe against the effusions of his 
impatience and indignation. All through 
the course of this exciting episode in his life, 
his own foresight and knowledge of himself 


CARLINGFORD. 

had been torture to the doctor, and had 
brought him in addition to all other trials, 
silent agonies of self-contempt which nobody 
could guess. But he could not alter his nat- 
ure. He w'ent through his day’s work very 
wretched and dejected, yet with an ineffable 
touch of secret comfort behind all, which 
sometimes would look him in the face for a 
moment like a passing sunbeam, yet some- i 
times seemed to exasperate beyond bearing 
the tantalizing misery of his fate. A more 
agitated, disturbed, passionate, and self-con- 
suming man than the doctor was not in Car- 
lingford, nor within a hundred miles ; yet it 
was not perfect wretchedness after all. 

Nettie, on her part, went back to Mrs. 
Fred in the parlor, after she had parted from 
Edw'ard Rider, with feelings somewdiat dif- i 
ferent from the doctor’s. Perhaps she, too, 
had indulged a certain pang of expectation 
as to what might follow after Fred was gone, 
in the new world that should be after that 
change ; for Nettie, with all her wisdom of 
experience, was still too young not to believe 
that circumstances did change everything 
now and then, even dispositions and hearts. | 
But before Dr. Rider knew it — before he had 
even wound up his courage to the pitch of 
asking what was now to happen to them — i 
the little Australian had made up her mind :: 
to that which was inevitable. The same Su- ; 
san wdiose ceaseless discontents and selfish 
love had driven Nettie across the seas tp , 
look for Fred, was now reposing on that sofa 
in her widow’s cap, altogether unchanged, as 
helpless and unabaiidonable, as dependent, 
as much a fool as ever. The superior wretch- » 
edness of Fred’s presence and life had par- 
tially veiled Susan’s character since they 
came to Carlingford. Now she had the field 
to herself again, and Nettie recognized at 
once the familiar picture. From the moment 
w’hen Susan in her mourning came down- 
stairs, Nettie»acknowledged the weakness of 
circumstances, the pertinacity of nature. 
What could she do ? — she gave up the 
scarcely formed germ of hope that had be- 
gun to appear in her breast. She made up 
her mind silently to what must be. No ag- 
onies of martyrdom could have made Nettie 
desert her post and abandon these helpless 
souls. They could do nothing for themselves, 
old or young of them ; and who was there 
to do it all ? she asked herself, with that 
perpetual reference to necessity which was 


THE doctor’s family. 


Nettie’s sole process of reasoning on the sub- 
ject. Thus considered, the arguments were 
short and telling, the conclusion unmistaka- 
ble. Here was this visible piece of business 
— four helpless creatures to be supported 
and provided and thrust through life some- 
how — with nobody in the world but Nettie 
to do it ; to bring them daily bread and 
hourly tendance, to keep them alive, and 
shelter their helplessness with refuge and 
protection. She drew up her tiny Titania. 
figure, and put^ack her silken flood of hair, 
and stood upright to the full extent of her 
little stature when she recognized the truth. 
Nobody could share with her that warfare 
which was hard to flesh and blood. She stood 
up to her post all alone, and saw how vain any 
attempt w’ould be to share at with another. 
There was nothing to be said on the subject 
— no possibility of help. She was almost 
glad when that interview, which she foresaw, 
was over, and when Edward had recognized 
as well as herself the necessities of the mat- 
ter. She went back again out of the little 
hall w’hcre, for one moment and no more, 
the lights of youth and love had flushed over 
Nettie, suffusing her paleness with rose- 
blushes. Now it was all over. The romance 
w^as ended, the hero gone, and life had be- 
gun anew. 

“ I can’t say I ever liked this place,” sighed 
Mrs. Fred, when the lamp was lit that even- 
ing, and Nettie had come dov/u-stairs again 
'after seeing the children in bed. “ It was 
always dull and dreary to me. If we hadn’t 
been so far out of Carlingford, things might 
have been very different. My poor Fred ! 
instead of taking care of him, all the dangers 
that ever could be were put in his way.” 

This sentence was concluded by some 
weeping, of which, however, Nettie did not 
take any notice. Maldng mourning by lamp- 
light is* hard work, as all poor seamstresses 
know. Nettie had no tears in the eyes that 
were fixed intently upon the little coat which 
was to complete Freddy’s outfit ; and she did 
not even look up from that urgent occupation 
to deprecate Susan’s tears. 

“ I tell you, Nettie, I never could bear this 
place,” said Mrs. Fred ; “ and now, when- 
ever I move, the dreadful thoughts that come 
into my mind are enough to kill me. You 
always were strong from a baby, and of 
course it is not to be expected that you can 
understand what my feelings are. And Mrs. 


77 

Smith is anything but kind, or indeed civil, 
sometimes ; and I don’t think I could live 
through another of these cold English win- 
ters. I am sure I never could keep alive 
through another winter, now my poor Fred’s 
gone.” 

“ Well ? ” asked Nettie, with involuntary 
harshness in her voice. 

“ I don’t care for myself,” sobbed Mrs. 
Fred, “but it’s dreadful to see you so un- 
feeling, and to think what would become of 
his poor children if anything were to happen 
to me. I do believe you would marry Ed- 
ward Eider if it were not for me, and go and 
wrong the poor children, and leave them des- 
titute. Nobody has the feeling for them 
that a mother has ; but if I live another win- 
ter in England, I know I shall die.” 

“ You have thought of dying a great many 
times,” said Nettie, “ but it has never come 
to anything. Never mind that just now. 
What do you want ? Do you want me to 
take you back to the colony all these thou- 
sands of miles after so many expenses as 
there have been already ? — or what is it you 
want me to do ? ” 

“ You always speak of expenses, Nettie : 
you are very poor-spirited, though people 
think so much of you,” said Susan ; “ and 
don’t you think it is natural I should wish to 
go home, now my poor Fred has been taken 
away from me ? And you confessed it would 
bo best for the children. W e know scarcely 
anybody here, and the very sight of that Ed- 
ward that was so cruel to my poor Fred — ” 

“ Susan, don’t be a fool,” said Nettie ; 
“you know better in your heart. If you 
will tell me plainly what you want, I shall 
listen to you ; but if not, I will go up-stairs 
and put away Freddy’s things. Only one 
thing I may tell you at once ; you may leave 
Carlingford if you please, but I shall not. I 
cannot take you back again to have you ill 
all the way, and the children threatening to 
fall overboard twenty times in a day. I did 
it once, but I will not do it again.” 

“ You will not ? ” cried Susan. “ Ah, I 
know what you mean*; I know very w'cll 
what you mean. You think Edward Eider — ” 

Nettie rose up and faced her sister with a 
little gasp of resolution -which frightened 
Mrs. Fred. “ I don’t intend to have any- 
thing said about Edward Eider,” said Net- 
tie ; “ he has nothing to do with it one way 
or another. I tell you what I told him, that 




78 CHRONICLES OF 

I h;jve not the heart to carry you all back 
again ; and I cannot afford it either ; and if 
you want anything more, Susan,” added the 
peremptory creature, flashing forth into some- 
thing of her old 'spirit, “ I sha’n’t go — and 
that is surely enough.” 

With which words Nettie went off like a 
little sprite to put away Freddy’s coat, newly 
completed, along with the other articles of 
his wardrobe, at w'hich she had been work- 
ing all day. In that momentary impulse of 
decision and self-will, a few notes of a song 
came unawares from Nettie’s lip, as she 
glanced, light and rapid as a fairy, up-stairs. 
She stopped a minute after with a sigh. 
Were Nettie’s singing days over ? She had 
at least come at last to find her life hard, 
and to acknowledge that this necessity which 
was laid upon her was grievous by times to 
flesh and blood ; but not the less for that 
*■ did she arrange Freddy’s little garments 
daintily in the drawers, and pause, before 
she went down-stairs again, to cover him up 
in his little bed. 

Susan still sat pondering and crying over 
the fire. Her tears were a great resource 
to Mrs. Fred. They occupied her when she 
had nothing else to occupy herself with ; 
and when she cast a weeping glance up 
from her handkerchief to see Nettie draw 
her chair again to the table, and lay down a 
little pile of pinafores and tuckers which 
required supervision, Susan wept still more, 
and said it was well to be Nettie, who never 
was overcome by her feelings. Thus the 
evening passed dully enough. Just then, 
perhaps, Nettie was not a very conversable 
companion. Such interviews as that of this 
day linger in the heads of the interlocutors, 
and perhaps produce more notable effects 
afterwards than at the moment. Nettie 
was not thinking about it. She was simply 
going over it again, finding out the tones 
and meanings which, in the haste and ex- 
citement of their occurrence, did not have 
their full force. The fulness of detail that 
lingers about such pictures, which are not 
half apprehended till they have been gone 
over again and again, is marvellous. The 
pinafores went unconsciously through Net- 
tie’s fingers. • She was scarcely aw'are of 
Susan crying by the fire. Though it had 
been in some degree a final and almost hope- 
less parting, there was comfort behind the 
cloud to Nettie as well as to the doctor. 


CARLINGFORD. 

She had forgotten all about the discussion i 
with which the evening began before Susan j 
spoke again. H 

“ Richard Chatham came home with the 
last mail,” said Susan, making a feeble ef- 
fort to renew the fight. He sent me a let- 
ter last week, you know. I dare say he will 
come to see us. Richard Chatham from 
Melbourne, Nettie. I dare say he will not 
stay out of the colony long.” 

Nettie, who was lost in her own thoughts, 
made no reply. ♦ 

“ I dare say,” repeated Mrs. Fred, “ he 
will be going out again in a month or 
two. I do not believe he could bear this j 
dreadful English winter any more than I j 
could. I dare say he’d be glad to take care j 
of us out — if you should change your mind 
about going, Nettie.” i 

Nettie gave her sister a glance of resolu- | 
tion and impatience — a swift glance upw'ard 
from her work, enough to show she marked ^ 
and understood — but still did not speak. 

“ Richard Chatham was always very good- 
natured : it would be such a good thing for 
us to go in the same ship — if you should j 
happen to change your mind about going, 
Nettie,” said Mrs. Fred, rising to retire to ’ 
her room. “lam going to bed to try to get 
a little sleep. Such wretched nights as I 
have would kill anybody. I should not 
wonder if Richard Chatham came some of 
these days to see us. Poor fellow ! he had. 
always a great fancy for our family ; and it 
would be suck a thing for us, Nettie, if you 
should change your mind about going, to go 
in the same ship ! ” 

With which Parthian shot Mrs. Fred made 
her way up-stairs and retired from the field. 
Nettie woke with a startled consciousness 
out of her dreams, to perceive that here was 
the process of iteration begun which drives 
the wisest to do the will of fools. She w^oke 
up to it for a. moment, and, raising her 
drooping head, watched her sister make her 
way with her handkerchief in her hand, and 
the broad white bands of her cap streaming 
over her shoulders, to the door. Susan stole 
a glance round before she disappeared, to 
catch the startled glance of that resolute 
little face, only half woke up, but wholly 
determined. Though Mrs. Fred dared not 
say another word at that moment, she dis- 
appeared full of the conviction that her ar- 
row had told, and that the endless persist- 


THE DOCTOR^S FAMILY. 


ence witli whicli she herself, a woman and a 
fool, was gifted, need only be duly exercised 
to win the day. When Susan was gone, 
that parting arrow did quiver for a moment 
in Nettie’s heart ; but the brave little girl 
had, for that one night, a protection which 
her sister wist not of. After the dpor closed, 
Nettie fell back once more into that hour of 
existence which expanded and opened out 
the more for every new approach which 
memory made to it. Sweet nature, gentle 
youth, and the magician greater than cither, 
came round her in a potent circle and de- 
fended Nettie. The woman was better off 
than the man in this hour of their separa- 
tion, yet union. He chafed at the consola- 
tion which was but visionary ; she, perhaps, 
in that visionary, ineffable solacement found 
a happiness greater than any reality could 
ever give. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

It was some months after the time of this 
conversation when a man, unlike the usual 
aspect of man in Carlingford, appeared at 
the inn with a carpet-bag, and asked his 
way to St. Roque’s Cottage. Beards were 
not common in those days : nobody grew 
one in Carlingford except Mr. Lake, who, 
in his joint capacity of portrait-painter and 
drawing-master, represented the erratic and 
lawless followers of Art to the imagination 
of the respectable town. But the stranger 
who made his sudden appearance at the 
George wore such a forest of hair on the 
lower part of his burly countenance as ob- 
literated all ordinary landmarks in that re- 
gion, and by comparison made Mr. Lake’s 
dainty little moustache and etceteras sink 
into utter propriety and respectablencss. 
The rest of the figure eorresponded with 
this luxuriant feature ; the man was large 
and burly, a trifle too stout for a perfect 
athlete, but powerful and vigorous almost 
beyond anything then known in Carlingford. 
It was now summer, and warm weather, and 
the dress of the new-eomer was as unusual 
as the other partieulars of his appearance. 
In his broad straw hat and linen coat he 
stood cool and large in the ^ady hall of the 
George, with glimpses of white English 
linen appearing under his forest of beard, 
and round his brown sun-scorched wrists. 
A very small stretch of imagination was 
necessary to thrust pistols into his belt and a 


79 

cutlass into his hand, and reveal him as the 
settler-adventurer of a half-savage disturbed 
country, equally ready to work or to fight, 
and more at home in the shifts and expe- 
dients of the wilderness than among the 
bonds of civilization ; yet always retaining, 
as English adventurers will, certain dainty 
personal particulars — such, for instance, as 
that prejudice in favor of clean linen, which 
only the highest civilization can cultivate 
into perfection. He went off down Grange 
Lane with the swing and poise of a Hercu- 
les, when the admiring waiters directed 
him to the Cottage. Miss Wodehouse, who 
was standing at the door*with Lucy, in the 
long gray cloak and close bonnet lately 
adopted by the sisterhood of mercy, which 
had timidly, under the auspices of the per- 
petual curate, set itself a going at St. 
Roque’s, looked after the savage man with 
an instinct of gentle curiosity, wondering'* 
where he was going and where he came 
from. To tell the truth, that tender-hearted 
soul could with more comfort to herself 
have stepped down a little on the road to 
St. Roque’s, and watched whether that ex- 
traordinary figure was in search of Nettie — 
a suspicion which immediately occurred to 
her — than she could set out upon the dis- 
trict-visiting, to which Lucy now led hci 
forth. But Miss Wodehouse had tremu- 
lously taken example by the late rector, 
whose abrupt retirement from the duties foi 
which he did not feel himself qualified, the 
good people in Carlingford had scarcely 
stopped discussing. Miss W odehouse, deeply 
impressed in her gentle mind by the inci- 
dents of that time, had considered it her 
duty to reclaim if possible — she who had nc 
circle of college dons to retire into — her own 
life from its habits of quiet indolence. She 
consented to go with Lucy into all the chari- 
table aflTairs of Carlingford. She stood si- 
lent with a pitying face and believed in all 
the pretences of beggary which Lucy saw 
through by natural insight. But it was no 
more her natural element than the long 
gray cloak was a natural garment for that 
spotless, dove-colored woman. Her eyes 
turned wistfully after the stranger with sup- 
pressed impulses of gentle curiosity and 
gossip. She knew very well he did not be- 
long to Carlingford. She knew nobody in 
Grange Lane or the neighborhood to whom 
he could belong. She wanted very much 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


80 

to stop and inquire at the stable-boy of the 
George, their own gardener’s son, Avho and 
what this new-comer was, and turned back 
to look after him before slie turned out of 
George Street following Lucy with lively 
anxiety to know whether he was going to 
St. Loque’s. Perhaps the labors of a sister- 
hood of mercy require a special organization 
even of the kind female soul. Miss Wode- 
house, the most tender-hearted of human 
creatures, did not rise to that development ; 
and, with a little pang of unsatisfied won- 
der, saw the unaccustomed Hercules disap- 
pear in the distance without being able to 
make out whither die was bound. 

Nobody, however, who had been privi- 
leged to share the advantages of Mrs. Fred 
Rider’s conversation for some time back, 
could be at a loss to guess who this messen- 
ger from the wilderness was. It w'as Rich- 
ard Chatham come at last— he with whose 
name Nettie had been bored and punctured 
tlu'ough and through from the first day of 
his introduction into Susan’s talk till now. 
Mrs. Fred had used largely in the interval 
that all-potent torture of the “ continual 
dropping ; ”-JL used it so perpetually as, 
though without producing any visible ef- 
fect upon Nettie’s resolution, to introduce 
often a^ certain sickness and disgust with 
everything into that steadfast squI. Nor did 
she content herself with her own exertions, 
but skilfully managed to introduce the idea 
into the minds of the children— ready as all 
children are, for change and novelty. Net- 
tie had led a hard enough life for these three 
months. She could not meet Edward Rider, 
nor he her, with a calm pretence of friend- 
ship ; and Susan, always insolent and spite- 
ful, and now mistress of the position, filled 
the doctor wdth an amount of angry irrita- 
tion which his longings for Nettie’s society 
could not quite subdue. That perpetual 
Ijarrier between them dismayed both. Meet- 
ings which always ended in pain were best 
avoided, except at those intervals when long- 
ing love could not, even under that penalty, 
refuse itself the gratification j but the dis- 
mal life which was lighted up only by those 
unfrequent, agitating, exasperating encount- 
ers, and which flowed on through a hundred 
petty toilsome duties to the fretful accompa- 
niment of Susan’s iterations and the novel 
persecution now carried on by the children, 
was naturally irksome to the high-spirited 


and impatient nature which, now no longer 
heart-whole or fancy-free, did not find it so 
easy to carry its own way triumphantly . 
through those heavy clogs of helplessness > 
and folly. In the days w'hen Miss Wode- ^ 
house pitied and wondered, Nettie had re-^ ^ 
quired no sympathy ; she had carried on | 
her course victorious, more entirely con- | 
scious of the supreme gratification of having I 
her own w^ay, than of the utter self-sacrifice 
which she made to Fred and his family. 
But now the time predicted by Miss Wode- 
house had arrived. Nettie’s own personal 
happiness had come to be at stake, and had 
been unhesitatingly given up. But the 
knowledge of that renunciation dwelt wdth 
Nettie. Not all the natural generosity of 
her mind — not that still stronger argument 
which she used so often, the mere necessity 
and inevitableness of the case, could blind 
her eyes to the fact that she had given up 
her own happiness ; and bitter flashes of 
thought would intervene, notwithstanding 
even the self-contempt and reproach with 
which she became aw'are of them. That 
doubtful, complicated matter, most hard and 
difficult of mortal problems, pressed hard 
upon Nettie’s mind and heart. In former 
days, when she scornfully denied it to be 
self-sacrifice, and labored on, always indom- 
itable, unconscious that what she did was 
anything more than the simplest duty and i 
necessity, all was well W'ith the dauntless, 
all-enterprising soul; but growing knowl- , 
edge of her own heart, of other hearts, cast 
dark, perplexing shades upon Nettie, as 
upon all other wayfarers in these complex 
paths. The effect upon her mind was differ- 
ent from the effect to be expected according 
to modern sentimental ethics. Nettie had 
never doubted of the true' duty, the true 
necessity, of her position, till she became 
conscious of her vast sacrifice. Then a hun- 
dred doubts appalled her. Was she so en- 
tirely right as she had supposed ? Was it 
best to relieve the helpless hands of Fred 
and Susan of their natural duties, and bear 
these burdens for them, and disable herself 
when her time came from the nobler natural 
yoke in which her full womanly influence 
might have told to an extent impossible to it 
now? These questions made Nettie’s head, 

which knew no fanciful pangs, ache with 
painful thought, and confused her heart and 
dimmed her lights when she most needed 


THE doctor’s FAiMILY. 81 


them to burn brightly. While, at the very 
time when these doubts assailed her, her 
sister’s repetitions and the rising discontent 
and agitations of the children, came in to 
overcloud the whole business in a mist of 
sick impatience and disgust. Return to 
Australia was never out of Susan’s mind, 
never absent from her pertinacious foolish 
lips. Little Freddy harped upon it all day 
long, and so did his brother and sister. 
Nettie said nothing, but retired with exas- 
perated weariness upon her own thoughts — 
sometimes thinking, tired of the conflict, why 
not give in to them ? why not complete the 
ofiering, and remove once for all into the 
region of impossibility, that contradictory 
longing for another life that still stirred by 
times in her heart ? She had never given 
expression to this weary inclination to make 
an end of it, which sometimes assailed her 
fatigued soul j but this was the condition in 
which Richard Chatham’s visit found her, 
when that Bushman, breathing of the wilds 
and the winds, came down the quiet sub- 
urban road to St. Roque’s, and filling the 
whole little parlor with his beard and his 
presence, came stumbling into the confined 
room, where Mrs. Fred still lay on the sofa, 
and Nettie pursued her endless work. 

“ Sorry to hear of the poor Ifloctor’s acci- 
dent,” said the Australian, to whom Fred 
bore that title. “ But he always was a bit 
of a rover ; though it’s sad when it comes to 
that. And so you are thinking of a return 
to the old colony ? Can’t do better, I should 
say — there aint room in this blessed old 
country for anything but tax-gatherers and 
gossips. I can’t find enough air to breathe 
for my part — and what there is, is taxed — 
leastways the light is, which is all the same. 
Well, Mrs. Rider ! say the word, ma’am, and 
Am at your disposal. I’m not particular 
for a month or two, so as I get home before 
next summer ; and if you’ll only tell me your 
time. I’ll make mine suit, and do the best I 
can for you all. Miss Nettie’s afraid of the 
voyage, is she ? That’s a new line for her, 
I believe. Something taken her fancy in this 
horrid old box of a place, eh ? Ha ! ha ! 
but I’ll be head-nurse and courier to the 
party. Miss Nettie, if you trust yourselves to 
me.” 

We don’t mean to go back, thank you,” 
said Nettie. “ It is only a fancy of Susan. 
Nobody ever dreamt of going back. It is 

CHRONICLES OF CARLIN GFORD. 


much too expensive and troublesome to be 
done so easily. Now we are here, we mean 
to stay.” 

The Bushman looked a little startled, and 
his lips formed into a whistle of astonish- 
ment, which Nettie’s resolute little face kept 
inaudible. “ Taken your fancy very much, 
eh. Miss Nettie ? ” said the jocular savage, 
who fancied raillery of one kind or other 
the proper style of conversation to address 
to a young lady. Nettie gave that big hero 
a flashing sudden glance which silenced him. 
Mr. Chatham once more formed an inaudi- 
ble whew ! with his lips, and looked at Mrs. 
Fred. 

“But your heart inclines to the old col- 
ony, Miss Susan ? — I beg your pardon— 
didn’t remember what I was saying at that 
moment. Somehow you look so much as 
you used to do, barring the cap,” said the 
Australian, “ that one forgets all that has 
happened. You incline to cross the seas 
again, Mrs. Rider, without thinking of the 
expense? — and very sensible too. There 
never was a place like this blessed old coun- 
try for swallowing up a man’s money 
You’ll save as much in a year in the colony 
as will take you across.” 

“ That is what I always say ; — but oi 
course my wishes are little thought of,” said 
Mrs. Fred, with a sigh ; “ of course, it’s 
Nettie we have to look to now. If she does 
not choose, to be sure, it does not matter 
what I wish. Ah ! if I don’t look different, 
I feel different— things are changed now’* 

The Bushman gave a puzzled glance, fii-st 
at one sister and then at the other. It oc- 
curred to him that Fred had not been so 
much of a strength and protection to his 
family as this speech implied, and that Net- 
tie had been the person whom Mrs. Rider 
had to “ look to ” even before they left that 
colony for which she now sighed. But Mrs. 
Fred, in her sorrow and her white cap, was 
an interesting figure to the eyes which were 
not much accustomed to look upon woman- 
kind. He had no doubt hers was a hard 
case. Nettie sat opposite, very busy, silent, 
and resolute, flashing dangerous sudden 
glances occasionally at her languid sister 
and their big visitor. ^ It was confusing to 
meet these brilliant, impatient, wrathful 
eyes , though they were wonderfully bright, 
they put out the wild man of the woods, and 
made him feel uncomfortable. He turned 
6 


S2 CHRONICLES OF 

with relief to those milder orbs which Mrs. 
Fred buried in her handkerchief. P oor lit- 
tle oppressed woman, dependent upon that 
little arbitrary sister ! The sincerest pity 
awoke in the Bushman’s heart. 

“Well!” he said, good-humoredly, “I 
hope you’ll come to be of one mind when 
Miss Nettie thinks it over again ; and you 
have only to drop me a line to let me know, 
when your plans are formed ; and it will go 
hard with me, but Pll make mine suit them 
one way or another. All that I can do for 
you in the way of outfit or securing your 
passages — or even, if you would allow me — ” 

Here the good fellow paused, afraid to 
venture any further. Nettie looked up in a 
sudden blaze, and transfixed him with her 
eye. 

“We have enough for everything we 
want, thank you,” said Nettie, looking 
through and through his guilty benevolent 
intentions, and bringing a flush of confusion 
to his honest cheeks. “ AVhfen I say I can- 
not afford anything, I don’t mean to ask 
anybody’s assistance, Mr. Chatham. We 
can do very well by ourselves. If it came 
to be best for the children — or if Susan 
keeps on wishing it, and gets her own way, 
as she generally does,” said Nettie, with 
heightened color, dropping her eyes, and 
going on at double speed with her work, “I 
daresay we shall manage it as we did before. 
But that is my concern. Nobody in the 
world has anything to do with it but me.” 

“ O Nettie, dear, you’re giving in at last 1 
— do say you’ll go I and Mr. Chatham prom- 
ises he’ll take care of us on the way,” cried 
Mrs. Fred, clasping her hands. They were 
thin hands, and looked delicate in contrast 
with her black dress. She was very inter- 
esting, pathetic, and tender, to the rough 
eyes of the Bushranger. He thought that 
imperative little creature opposite, with her 
brilliant glances, her small head drooping 
under those heavy braids of hair, her tiny 
figure and rapid fingers, looked like a little 
cruel sprite oppressing the melancholy soul. 
When Nettie rose from the table, goaded 
into sudden intolerance by that appeal, the 
climax of the “ continual dropping,” and 
threw her work indignantly on the table, and 
called Freddy to •come directly, and get 


CARLINGFORD. 

dressed for his w^alk, the impression made 
by her supposed arbitrary and imperious 
behavior was not diminished. She went out 
disdainful, making no reply, and left those 
two to a private conference. Then Mrs. 
Fred unbosomed her bereaved heart to that 
sympathetic stranger. She told him how 
different everything was now — how hard it 
was to be dependent, even on one’s sister — 
how far otherwise things might have been, ^ 
if poor dear Fred had been more prudent: ' || 
one way or other, all her life through, Susan 
had been an injured woman. All her desire 
w’as to take tlie children back to the colony 
before she died. “If Nettie would but | 
yield ! ” sighed Mrs. Fred, clasping her Jj 
hands. I 

“ Nettie must yield I ” cried the Bush- 
ranger, full of emotion j and Susan cried a |] 
little, and told him how much the poor dear *' 
children wished it ; and knew in her fool’s 
heart that she had driven Nettie to the ex- 
tremest bounds of patience, and that a little 
more persistence and iteration would gain 
the day. 

In the mean time Nettie went out with 
Freddy, — the other two being at school, — 
and took him across the fields for his after- 
noon walk. The little fellow talked of Austra- 
lia all the waf , with a childish treachery and 
betrayal of her cause which went to Nettie’s 
heart. She walked by his side, hearing with- 
out listening, throbbing all over with secret 
disgust, impatience, and despair. She, too, 
perceived well enough the approaching crisis. 
She saw that once more all her own resolu- 
tion — the purpose of her heart — would be 
overborne by the hopeless pertinacity of the 
unconceivable, unreasoning fool. She did 
not call her sister hard names — she recog- 
nized the quality without giving it its ap- 
propriate title — and recognized also, with a 
bitterness of resistance, yet a sense of the 
inevitable, not to be described, the certain 
issue of the unequal contest. What chance 
had the generous little heart, the hasty tem- 
per, the quick and vivacious spirit, against 
that unwearying, unreasoning pertinacity? 
Once more she must arise, and go forth to 
the end of the world ; and the sacrifice 
must be final now. 


THE doctor’s Family. 


PART IV. — CHAPTER XIV. 

“ Well, it’s to be hoped she’s going to 
do well for herself — that’s all we’ve got to 
do with it, eh ? ” 

“I suppose so,” said Mr. Wodehouse; 
“ she’s nothing to you, is she, but a little 
girl you’ve taken a deal of notice of ? — more 
notice than was wanted, if I am any judge. 
If she does go and marry this fellow from 
Australia, and he’s willing to take the whole 
bundle back to where they came from, it is 
the best thing that could happen, in my 
opinion. Sly young dog that doctor though, 
I must say — don’t you think so ? Well, 
that’s how it appears to me. Let’s see ; 

there was Bessie ; hum ! perhaps it’s as 

well, ill present circumctances, to name no 
names. There were two, in the first in- 
stance, you know ; and the way he got out 
of that was beautiful ; it was what I call in- 
structive, was that. And then — why then, 
there was Miss Marjoribanks, you know — 
capital match that — just the thing for young 
Hider — set him up forTife.” 

“ Papa, pray — pray don’t talk nonsense,” 
said Miss Wodehouse, with gentle indigna- 
tion. “ Miss Marjoribanks is at least ten 
years ” 

“ Oh, stuff ! — keep your old maidish mem- 
ory to yourself, Molly ; who cares for a dozen 
years or so ? Hasn’t she all the old Scotch- 
man’s practice and his savings ? — and a fine 
woman yet — a fine woman, eh? Well, yes, 
I think so ; and then here this little wretch 
of a sister-in-law. Why the doctor’s taken 
your role, AVcntworth, eh ? Well, I suppose 
w'hat ought to be your role, you know, though 
1 7mt;eseen you casting glances at the strange 
little creature yourself.” 

“ Indeed, I assure you, you are entirely 
mistaken,” said Mr. Wentworth, hastily, 
with a sudden flush of either indignation or 
guilt. The curate glanced at Lucy Wode- 
house, who w^as walking ‘demurely by his 
side, but who certainly did prick up her ears 
at this little bit of news. She saw very 
well that he had looked at her, but would 
take no notice of his glance. But Lucy’s 
curiosity was notably quickened, notwith- 
standing St. Pvoque’s Cottage was wonder- 
fully handy, if the perpetual curate of the 
pretty suburb and church saw anything 
worth visiting there. Lucy drew up her 
pretty shoulders in her gray sister-of-mcrcy- 
cloak, and opened her blue eyes a little 


83 

wider. She was still in circumstances to 
defy her reverend lover, if his eyes had de- 
clined upon lower attractions than her own. 
She looked very straight before her with un- 
pitying precision down the road, on which 
St. Boque’s church and cottage were be- 
coming already visible. The whole party 
were walking briskly over a path hard with 
frost, which made their footsteps ring. The 
air was still with a winterly touch, benumbed 
with cold, yet every sound rang sharply 
through that clear cloudless atmosphere, 
reddened without being warmed by the sun 
as it approached the west. It was Christ- 
mas again, and they were wending their way 
towards St. Boque’s to assist at the holiday 
decorations, for which cartloads of laurel and 
holly had been already deposited within the 
church. Lucy Wodehouse was chief direct- 
ress of these important operations. Her 
sister had accompanied her, partly to admire 
Lucy’s work, and partly to call at the cot- 
tage and see how Nettie was going on. Mr. 
Wodehouse himself had come merely for the 
pride and pleasure of seeing how much they 
were indebted to his little girl ; and the at- 
tendance of the curate was most easily ex- 
plainable. It was, indeed, astonishing how 
many extremely necessary and natural “calls 
of duty” should bring Mr. Wentworth’s path 
parallel to that of the Wodehouses. This is 
why they were all proceeding together on 
this particular afternoon in the week before 
Christmas towards St. Roque’s. 

In the church, when the party arrived, a 
little group of workers were busy. The 
chancel arch was already bristling with gfossy 
holly leaves. At a little distance from the 
active group occupied with this pleasant 
work, and full of chatter and consultation, 
as was natural, stood one little figure point- 
ing out to two children the wonders of that 
decorative art. Every one 6f the new-com- 
ers, except Mr. Wodehouse, recognized 
Nettie before she was aware of their pres- 
ence. She stood with her bonnet fallen a 
little back as it generally was, either by en- 
counter of the wind, or by the quantity and 
luxuriance of her beautiful hair, looking up- 
wards to the point where she had directed 
the children’s eyes. She looked a little for- 
lorn and solitary, as was natural, all by her- 
self, so near that group of busy girls in the 
chancel — so little separated from them by 
age, so entirely divided by circumstances. 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


84 

If a certain softening or half-tender pity- 
shone in the curate’s eye, could Lucy Wode- 
housc blame him ? But the fact was, Lucy 
SAvept past the little Australian with a very 
brief salutation, and burst into sudden crit- 
icism of the work that had been done in her 
absence which startled her collaborateurs, 
while Mr. WentAVorth folloAved her into the 
chancel with a meekness quite unusual to 
that young priest. Nettie noted both cir- 
cumstances Avith a little surprise ; but, not 
connecting them in the most distant degree 
Avith herself, turned round with a little tAvitch 
of Freddy’s arm to go away, and in doing 
so almost Avalked into the arms of her older 
and more faitliful friend. Miss Wodehouse 
kissed her quite suddenly, touching Avith her 
soft old cheek that rounder, fairer, youthful 
face, Avliich turned, half Avondering, half 
pleased, with the look of a child, to receive 
her caress. Nettie was as unconscious that 
Miss Wodehouse’s unusual Avarmth was 
meant to make up for Lucy’s careless greet- 
ing, as that Lucy had passed her Avith a pos- 
itive flutter of resentment and indignation, 
and that she had been the subject of the 
conversation and thoughts of all the party. 
Miss Wodehouse turned Avith her, taking 
Freddy’s other hand — a proceeding to Avhich 
that hero rather demurred. They went out 
together to the frosty road, where the fair 
willoAv branches rustled betAveen the churqji 
and the cottage. When they reached the 
porch of St. Roque’s, Nettie instinctively 
held her breath, and stood still for a mo- 
ment. Along the footpath in front of them 
a big figure was passing, and beyond that 
beamed shadow the doctor’s drag flew past 
with all the separate tones of the hojse’s 
feet, the wheels, the jingle of the harness, 
ringing clear through the sharp, unsoftened 
medium of that frosty atmosphere. The 
doctor himself had all his attention concen- 
trated upon the windows of the cottagfe, in 
Avhich the sun was blazing red. He did not 
see Nettie in the church porch. He Avas 
looking for her too intently in the crimsoned 
windows, to which he turned his head back 
as ‘he dashed on. UnaAvares Nettie clasped 
the fingers of her little companion tighter in 
her hand as she Avatched that unexpected 
homage. The drag Avas out of sight in 
another moment ; and in a feAv seconds more 
the bell of the cottage pealed audibly, and 
the door was heard to open, admitting the 


Bushman, who had come upon one of Ids 
frequent visits. That last sound disturbed 
Nettie’s composure, and at the same time 
brought her back to herself. 

“I cannot ask you to go in, for Mr. 
Chatham is there, and Susan of course talk- 
ing to him,” said Nettie, Avith a quiet breath 
of restrained impatience, “ but I should like 
to talk to you, please. Let me take the 
children home, and then I will walk up with 
you. Mrs. Smith -is very kind ; she will 
take off their things for them ; they behave 
better now, when I am out for a foAV minutes 
—though, to be sure, I never am out much 
to try them. Come, children ; be good, and 
do not make a great noise till I come back.” 

“ What do you want to talk to Tier for ? ” 
asked the little girl, gazing coldly in Miss 
Wodehouse’s face. 

“ When Nettie went out to her, we made 
as much noise as Ave liked,” said Freddy, 
“but there was papa there. Now there’s 
only mamma, and she’s so cross. I hate 
Chatham — mamma’s ahvays crossest AA'hen 
Chatham’s there. What do you want to talk 
to people for, Nettie? Come in, and say 
there’s to be toast, and let us have tea.” 

“ We never have any tea till Nettie comes 
back,” added his sister^ looking full once 
more into Miss Wodehouse’s face. The calm 
childish impertinence disconcerted that gen- 
tle Avoman. She gazed at the wonderful 
creatures with dumb amazement. Her eyes 
fell before there steady stare. “ I should be 
sorry to bring you out again, dear, if it’s a 
trouble,” began Miss Wodehouse, turning 
her face with a sense of relief from the hard 
inspection of the children to their little guar- 
dian. 

Nettie made no reply, but carried off her 
children to the cottage door, turned them 
peremptorily in, and issued her last orders. 
“ If you make a noise, you shall not go,” 
said Nettie ; and then came back alert, Avith 
her rapid fairy steps, to Miss Wodehouse’s 
side. 

“ Does not their mother take any charge 
of them ? ” faltered the gentle inquisitor. 
“ I never can understand you young people, 
Nettie. Things were different in my days. 
Do you think it’s quite the best thing to dc 
other people’s duties for them, dear P and 
now I’m so sorry — oh, so sorry — to hear 
Avhat next you are going to do.” 

“ Susan is delicate,” said Nettie. “ She 


THE doctor’s family. 85 


never had any health to speak of— I mean, 
she always got better you know, but never 
had any pleasure in it. There must be a 
great deal in that,” continued Nettie, reflec- 
tively; “it never comes into my head to 
think whether I am ill or well ; but poor Su- 
san has always had to be thinking of it. Yes, 
I shall have to take them away,” she added 
again after a pause. “I am sorry, very 
sorry too. Miss Wodehouse. I did not think 
at one time that I had the heart to do it. 
J3ut, on the whole, you know, it seems so 
much better for them. Susan will be stronger 
out there, and I have not money enough to 
give the children a very good education. 
They will just have to push their way like 
the others ; and in the colony you know, 
things are so difierent. I have no doubt in 
my own mind now that it will be best for 
them all.” 

“But Nettie, Nettie, what of yourself? 
will it be best for you? ” cried Miss Wode- 
house, looking earnestly in her face. 

“ What is best for them will be best for 
me,” said Nettie, wdth a little impatient 
movement of her head. She said so with 
unfaltering spirit and promptitude. She 
had come to be impatient of the dreary maze 
in which she was involved. “ If one must 
break one’s heart, it is best to do it at once 
and have done with it,” said Nettie, under 
her breath. 

“ What was that you said about your 
heart?” said Miss Wodehouse. “Ah, my 
dear, that is what I wanted to speak of. 
You are going to be married, Nettie, and I 
■wanted to suggest to you, if you wont be 
angry. Don’t you think you could make 
•some arrangement about your sister and your 
family, dear ? — not to say a word against 
the Australian gentleman, Nettie, whom, of 
course, I don’t know. A man may be the 
best of husbands, and yet not be able to put 
up with a whole family. I have no doubt 
the children are very nice clever children, 
but their manner is odd, you know, for such 
young creatures. You have been sacrificing 
yourself for them all this time ; but remem- 
ber what I say— if you want to live happily, 
my dear, you’ll have to sacrifice them to your 
husband. I could not be content without 
saying as much to you, Nettie. I never was 
naif the good in this world that you are, biit 
I am nearlv twice as old — and one does pick 
up some little hints on the way. That is what 


you must do, Nettie. Make some arrange- 
ment, dear. * Ifhe has promised to take them 
out with you, that is all right enough ; but 
when you come to settle down in your new 
home, make some arrangement, dear.” 

When Miss Wodehouse arrived breathless 
at the conclusion of a speech so unusually 
long for her, she met Nettie’s eyes flashing 
upon her with the utmost surprise and curi- 
osity. “ I shall never marry anybody,” said 
Nettie. “ What do you mean ? ” 

“ Don’t say anything so foolish,” said Miss 
Wodehouse, a little nettled. “ Do you sup- 
pose I don’t know and see that Mr. Chatham 
coming and going ? How often has he been 
since the first time, Nettie ? and do you sup- 
pose it’s all been benevolence ? My dear, I 
know better.” 

Nettie looked up with a startled glance. 
She did not blush, nor betray any pleasant 
consciousness. She cast one dismayed look 
back towards the cottage, and another at 
Miss Wodehouse. “ Can that be why he 
comefe ? ” said Nettie with quiet horror. 
“ Indeed, I never thought of it before — but 
all the same, I shall never marry anybody. 
Do you imagine,” cried the brilliant creature, 
flashing round upon poor Miss Wodehouse, 
so as to dazzle and confuse that gentlewoman, 
“ that a man has only to intend such a thing 
and it’s all settled ? I think difierently. 
Twenty thousand Chathams would not move 
me. I shall never marry anybody, if I live 
to be as old as — as you, or Methuselah, or 
anybody. It is not my lot. I shall take the 
children out to Australia, and do the best I 
can for them. These children want a great 
deal of looking after — and after awhile in 
Carlingford, you will all forget that there 
ever was such a creature as Nettie. No, I 
am not crying. I never cry. I should scorn 
to cry about it. It is simply my business. 
That is what it is. One is sorry, of course, 
and now and then it feels hard, and all that. 
But what did one come into the world for, 
I should like to know? Does anybody 
suppose it was just to be comfortable, and 
have one’s own way ? I have had my own 
way a great deal — more than most people. 
If I get crossed in some things, I have to 
bear it. That is all I am going to say. I 
have got other things to do. Miss Wode- 
house. I shall never marry anybody all my 
life.” 

“ My dear, if you are thrown upon this 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


86 

Mr. Chatham for society all the time of the 

voyage, and have nobody else to talk to ” 

said the prudent interlocutor. 

“ Then we’ll go in another ship,” cried 
Nettie, promptly j that is easily managed. 
I know what it is, a long voyage with these 
children — they fall up the cabin stairs, and 
they fall down the forecastle ; and they give 
you twenty frights in a day that they will 
drop overboard. One does not have much 
- leisure for anything — not even for thinking, 
which is a comfort sometimes,” added Nettie, 
confidentially, to herself. 

“ It depends upon W'hat you think of 
whether thinking is a comfort or not,” said 
good Miss Wodehouse. “ When I think of 
you young people, and all the perplexities 
you get into ! There is Lucy now vexed with 
Mr. W entworth about something — or noth- 
ing worth mentioning; and there was poor 
Dr. Rider ! How he did look behind him, 
to be sure, as he went past St. Roque’s 1 I 
dare say it was you he was looking for, Net- 
tie. I wish you and he could have fancied 
each other, and come to some arrangement 
about poor Mr. Fred’s family — to give them 
so much to live on, or something. I assure 
you, w'hen I begin to think over such things, 
and how perverse both people and circum- 
stances are, thinking is very little comfort 
to me.” 

Miss Wodehouse drew a long sigh, and 
was by no means disinclined to cry over her 
little companion. Though she was the taller 
of the two, she leant upon Nettie’s fine little 
fairy arm as they went up the quiet road. 
Already the rapid winter twilight had fallen, 
and before them in the distance, glimmered 
the lights of Carlingford — foremost among 
which shone conspicuous the large placid 
white lamp — for professional reds and blues 
were beneath his dignity — which momited 
guard at Dr. Marjoribanks’ garden gate. 
Those lights, beginning to shine through 
the evening darkness, gave a wonderful look 
of home to the place. Instinctively there 
occurred to Nettie’s mind a vision of how it 
■would be on the sea, with a wide dark ocean 
heaving around the solitary speck on its 
breast. It did not matter ! If a silent sob 
arose in her heart,' it found no utterance. 
Might not Edward Rider have made that 
suggestion which had occurred only to Miss 
W odehouse ? Why did it never come into 
his head that Susan and her family might 


have a provision supplied for them, which 
would relieve Nettie ? He had not thought 
of it, that was all. Instead of that, he had 
accepted the impossibility. Nettie’s heart 
had grown impatient in the maze of might- 
be’s. She turned her back upon the lights, 
and clasped Miss Wodehouse’s hand, and 
said good-night hastily. She went on by 
herself very rapidly along the hard gleaming 
road. She did not pay any attention to her 
friend’s protestation that she too was com- 
ing back again to St. Roque’s to join Lucy 
— on the contrary, Nettie peremptorily left 
Miss Wodehouse, shaking hands with her in 
so resolute a manner that her gentle adviser 
felt somehow a kind of necessity upon her 
to pursue her way home ; and, only when 
Nettie was nearly out of sight, turned 
again with hesitation to retrace her steps 
towards St. Roque’s. Nettie, meanwhile, 
went on at a pace which Miss Wodehouse 
could not possibly have kept np with, clasp- 
ing her tiny hands together with a swell of 
scorn and disdain unusual to it in her heart. 
Yes 1 Why did not Edward Rider propose 
the “ arrangement ” which appeared feasible 
enough to Miss Wodehouse? Supposing 
even Nettie had refused to consent to it, as 
she might very probably have done with in- 
dignation — still, why did it not occur to Dr. 
Edward ? She asked herself the question 
with a heat and passion which she found it 
difficult to account for. She half despised 
her lover, as woman will, for obeying her — 
almost scorned him, as -w^oman will, for the 
mere constancy which took no violent meas- 
ures, but only suffered and accepted the in- 
evitable. To submit to what cannot be 
helped is a woman’s part. Nettie, hasten- 
ing along that familiar path, blazed into a 
sudden burst of rage against Edward because 
he submitted to it. What he could do else 
she was as ignorant of as any unreasonable 
creature could be. But that mattered little. 
With indignation she saw herself standing 
on the verge of that domestic precipice, and 
the doctor looking on, seeing her glide out 
of his reach, yet putting forth no violent sud- 
den hand to detain her. All the impatience 
of her fiery nature boiled in her veins as she 
hasted to the cottage, where Susan was dis- 
cussing her journey with her Australian vis- 
itor. No remnant of pathos or love-sicken- 
ing remained about Nettie, as she flashed in 
upon them in all her old haste and self-re- 


THE doctor’s family. 87 


liance — resolute to precipitate the catastro- 
phe which nobody took any measure to pre- 
vent. 

CHAPTER XV. 

It was not long before the doctor was 
made aware of the ghost in his troubled 
path. Nobody in Carlingford could meet 
the big Bushman in those streets, which al- 
W'ays looked too narrow for him, without a 
certain curiosity about that salvage man. 
Dr. Rider had observed him with jealous in- 
terest on his very first appearance ; but had 
hitherto connected no idea but that of a re- 
turn to Australia, which he felt sure Nettie 
would never consent to with the big stran- 
ger. With such a thought he had seen him 
making his way towards the cottage that 
very evening when he himself turned back, 
as long as those crimsoned windows were 
visible, to look for Nettie, who did not show 
herself. The doctor was bound to see a dis- 
tant patient, miles on the other side of Car- 
lingford. As he dashed along over the echo- 
ing road he had time to imagine to himself 
how Nettie might at that very moment be 
badgered and persecuted ; and when he had 
, seen his patient and done his duty, and with 
the lamps lighted in the drag, and the frosty 
wind blowing keen on’ his face, and the lights 
of Carlingford cheering him on in the dis- 
tapee, w^as once more returning, an impa- 
tience, somewhat akin to Nettie’s, suddenly 
came upon the doctor. Akin, yet difierent ; 
for in his case it was an impulse of sensa- 
tion, an inspiration of the exhilarating speed 
and energy of motion with which he flew 
through the bracing air, master of himself, 
liis horse, and the long sweep of solitary road 
before him. Again it occurred td Dr. Ri- 
der to dash forward to St. Roque’s and 
carry off Nettie, oppose it who would. The 
idea pleased him as he swept along in the 
darkness, its very impossibility making the 
vision sweeter. To carry her off at a stroke, 
in glorious defiance of circumstances, and 
win happiness and love, whatever might en- 
sue. In the flush of the moment the doctor 
• suddenly asked himself whether this, after 
all, were not the wisest course ? Whether, 
whatever might come of it, happiness was 
not worth the encounter of the dark array of 
troubles behind ? and whether to precipitate 
anything by a sudden conclusion might not 
be the best way of solving all the intricacies 
of the matter ? He was still in this mood 


when he arrived at his own house, where 
dinner, as usual, was not improved by hav- 
ing been ready for an hour. The lamp was 
not lighted when he came in, and only the 
cold reflection of the street lights outside, 
with a parti-colored gleam at the corner win- 
dow from his own red and blue professional 
ensign at the surgery door, lighted the soli- 
tary little room, where he looked in vain 
even for so much as a note or letter to bring 
some shadow of human fellowship to his 
home ; the fire smouldering dully, the big 
chair turned with a sullen back against the 
wall, as if nobody ever sat there, — though 
Nettie had once and forever appropriated it 
to her use, — everything in such inhuman 
trim and good order disgusted the doctor. 
He rang his bell violently for the lights and 
refreshments which were so slow of coming, 
and, throwing himself into that chair, bit his 
nails and stared out at the lamplight in the 
rapid access of thought that came upon him. 
The first thing that disturbed him in this 
was the apparition of a figure outside peer- 
ing in with some anxiety at the black win- 
dows — somebody who was evidently curious 
to know Avhether the doctor had yet come 
home. The unhappy doctor started, and 
rang his bell once more with furious itera- 
tion. He knew what .was coming. Some- 
body else, no doubt, had taken ill, without 
any consideration for young Rider’s dinner, 
which, however, a man must manage to swal- 
low even when tormented with importunate 
patients, and in love. But the knock of the 
untimely visitor sounded at the much-as- 
sailed door before Mary, sulky and resistant, 
had been able to arrange before the hungry 
doctor the half-warm, half-cold viands which 
his impatience would not permit to be duly 
“ heated up ; ” and he had just seated himself 
to dispose of the unsatisfactory meal when the 
little groom, who was as tired as his master, 
opened the door for Mrs. Smith from St. 
Roque’s. Mrs. Smith was a familiar peri- 
odical visitor at Dr. Rider’s. She had not 
ceased to hold to that hasty and unwise 
financial arrangement into which the doctor 
was persuaded to enter when Fred’s pipe had 
exasperated the landlady into rebellion. He 
had supplemented the rent at that exciting mo- 
ment rather than have Nettie disturbed ; and 
now that poor Fred’s pipe was extinguished 
forever, the doctor still paid the imposition 
demanded from him — half because he had no 


88 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


time to contest it, half because it was, how- 
ever improper and unnecessary, a kind of 
pleasure to do something for Nettie, little as 
she knew and deeply as she would have re- 
sented it. Dr. Eider’s brows cleared up at 
sight of Nettie’s landlady. He expected 
some little private anecdotes of her and her 
ways, such as no one else could give him. 
He gave Mrs. Smith a chair with a benig- 
nity to which she had no pei'sonal claim. 
Her arrival made Dr. Eider’s beefsteak pal- 
atable, though the cooking and condition of 
the same were, to say the least, far from per- 
fect. Mrs. Smith evidently was a little em- 
barrassed with the gracious reception she 
received.. She twisted the corner of her 
shawl in her finger as if it had been that 
apron with which women of her class relieve 
their feelings. She was in a false position. 
She came with the worst of news to the mel- 
ancholy lover, and he treated her as if she 
brought some special message or favor from 
the lady of his thoughts. 

“ Well, Mrs. Smith, and how are you all 
at the cottage ? ” said the doctor, applying 
himself leisurely to his beefsteak. 

“ Well, doctor, nothing to brag of,” said 
Mrs. Smith, fixing her eyes upon the fringe 
of her shawl. I haven’t nothing to say that’s 
pleasant, more the pity. I don’t know, sir, 
how you’ll take it when you come to hear ; 
but it’s come very hard upon me. Not for 
the sake of the lodgings, as’ll let again fast 
enough, now the poor gentleman’s sad fate 
is partly forgotten ; but you know, doctor, a 
body gets attached-like when one set of peo- 
ple stays long enough to feel at home ; and 
there aint many young ladies like Miss, if 
you were to search the country through. But 
now she’s really give in to it herself, there 
aint no more to be said. I never could 
bring myself to think Miss could give in till 
to-night when she told me j though Smith 
he always said, when the stranger gentleman 
took to coming so constant, as he knew how 
it would be.” 

For Heaven’s sake, what do you mean ? ” 
cried Dr. Eider, pushing away his plate, and 
rising hurriedly from that dinner which was 
fated never to be eaten. Mrs. Smith shook 
her head and drew out her handkerchief. 

“ I know nothing more, doctor, but just 
they’re going off to Australia,” said the land- 
lady, mournfully ; “ alid Miss has started 
packing the big boxes as have been in the 


hattic since ever they come ; they’re going 
off back where they come from — that’s all as 
I know.” 

“ Impossible ! ” cried the doctor. 

“ I’d have said so myself this morning,” 
said Mrs. Smith ; “ but there aint nothing 
impossible, doctor, as Miss takes in her head. 
Don’t you go and rush out after her, Dr. 
Eider. I beg of you upon my knees, if it 
was my last word ! I said to Smith I’d come 
up and tell the doctor, that he mightn’t hear 
from nobody promiscuous as couldn’t explain, 
and mightn’t come rushing down to the cot- 
tage to know the rights of it and find the 
gentleman there unexpected. If there’s one 
thing I’m afeard of, dt’s a quarrel between 
gentlemen in my house. So, doctor, for the 
love of peace, don’t you go anear the cot- 
tage. I’ll tell you everything if you listen 
to me.” 

The doctor, who had snatched up his hat 
and made a rapid step towards the door, 
came back and seized hold of his visitor’s 
shoulder, all his benignity having been put 
to flight by her unlooked-for revelation. 

“ Look thee ! I want the truth and no gos- 
sip ! What do you mean — what gentleman ?. 
What is it all about ? ” cried Dr. Eider, 
hoarse with sudden passion. 

“ Oh, bless you, doctor, don’t you blame 
it upon me, sir,” cried Mrs. Smith. “ It 
aint neither my fault nor my business, but 
that you’ve always been kind, and my heart 
warms to Miss. It’s the gentleman from 
Australia as has come and come again ; and 
being an unmarried gentleman, and Miss — 
you know what she is, sir — and, I ask you, 
candid. Dr. Eider, what was anybody to sup- 
pose ? ” 

The doctor grew wildly red up to his hair. 
He bit his lips over some furious words which 
Carlingford would have been horrified to hear, 
and grasped Mrs. Smith’s shoulder with a 
closer pressure. “ What did siie tell you ? ” 
said the doctor. “ Let me have it word for 
word. Did she say she was going away ? — 
did she speak of this — this— fellow ? ” ex- 
claimed the doctor, with an adjective over * 
which charity drops a tear. “ Can’t you tell 
me, without any supposes, what did she 
say ? ” 

“ I’m not the woman to stand being shook 
— let me go this minute, sir,” cried Mrs. 
Smith. “ The Australian gentleman is a 
very nice-spoken civil man, as was always 


THE doctor’s family. 


very respectful to me. She came into my i 
back parlor, doctor, if you ■will know so par- 
ticular — all shining and flashing, like as she 
does when something’s happened, I don’t 
make no doubt they had been settling mat- 
ters, them two, and so I told Smith. ‘ Mrs. 
Smith,’ said Miss, in her hasty way, enough 
to catch your breath coming all of a sudden, 

‘ I can’t stand this no longer — I shall have 
to go away — it aint no good resisting. 
These were her very words. Dr. Rider. ‘ Get 
me out the big boxes, please,’ said Miss. 

‘ It’s best done quietly. You must take 
your week’s notice, Mrs. Smith, from this 
day ; ’ and with that she kept moving about 
the room all in a flutter like, not able to rest. 

* Do go and get me out those boxes ; there’s 
always a ship on the 24th,’ she says, taking 
up my mushing and falling to work at it to 
keep her hands steady. * The day afore 
Christmas ! ’ says I ; ‘ and, O Miss, it’s 
running in the face of Providence to sail at 
this time of the year. You’ll have dteadful 
weather, as sure as life.’ You should have 
seen her, doctor ! She gave a sort of smile 
up at me, all flashing as if those eyes of hers 
were the sides of a lantern, and the light 
bursting out both there and all over. < All 
the better,’ she says, as if she’d have liked 
to fight the very wind and sea, and have her 
own way even there. Bless you, she’s dread- 
ful for having her own way. A good easy 
gentleman now, as didn’t mind much— -Dr. 
Rider — Doctor ! — you’re not agoing, after all 
I’ve told you ? Doctor, doctor, I say — ” 

But what Mrs. Smith said was inaudible 
to Edward Rider. The door rang in her ears 
as he dashed it after him, leaving her mis- 
tress of the field. There, where he had once 
left Nettie, he now, all-forgetful of his usual 
fastidious dislike of gossip, left Mrs. Smith 
sole occupant of his most private territories. 
lAt this unlooked-for crisis the doctor had 
neither a word nor a moment to spend on 
any one. He rushed out of the house, ob- 
livious of all those professional necessities 
[ which limit the comings and goings of a doc- 
I tor in great practice j he did not even know 
I what he was going to do. Perhaps it was 
i an anxious husband or father whom he all 
I but upset as he came out, with sudden im- 
! petuosity, into the unfrequented street ; but 
! he did not stop to see. Pale and desperate, 

: he faced the cold wind which rushed up be- 
I tween the blank garden-walls of Grange 


89 

Lane. At Mr. Wodehouse’s door he stum- 
bled against Cecil Wentworth coming out, 
and passed him "with a muttered exclamation 
which startled the curate. All the floating 
momentary jealousies of the past rushed back 
upon the doctor’s mind as ho passed that 
tall figure in the wintry road : how he had 
snatched Nettie from the vague kindnesses 
of the young clergyman — the words he had 
addressed to her on this very road — the an- 
swer she had given him once, which had 
driven him wild with passion and resent- 
ment. Impossible ! the Australian, it ap- 
peared, had found nothing impossible in 
those circumstances in which Nettie had in- 
trenched herself. Had the doctor’s wisdom 
been monstrous folly, and his prudence the 
blindest shortsightedness ? He asked himself 
the question as he rushed on towards that 
lighted window shining far along the dark 
road — the same window which he had seen 
Nettie’s shadow cross, which had been opened 
to light poor Fred upon the way he never 
could tr^ad again. Within that jealous 
blind, shining in that softened domestic 
light, what drama, murderous to the doctor’s 
peace, might be going on now ? 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Nettie had taken her resolution all at 
once. Breathless in sudden conviction, an- 
gry, heated, yet seeing in the midst of her 
excitement no help but in immediate action, 
the hasty little woman had darted into the 
heart of the difficulty at once. Every mo- 
ment she lingered wore her out and dis- 
gusted her more with the life and fate 
which, nevertheless, it was impossible to 
abandon or shrink from. Nothing was so 
safe as to make matters irrevocable — to 
plunge over the verge at once. All gleam- 
ing with 'resolve and animation — with the 
frosty, chill, exhilarating air which had kin- 
dled the color in her cheeks and the light in 
her eyes — with haste, resentment, every feel- 
ing that can quicken the heart and make 
the pulse leap — Nettie had flashed into the 
little parlor, where all was so quiet and leis- 
urely. There Susan sat in close confabula- 
tion with the Bushman. The children had 
been banished out of the room, because their 
mother’s head was not equal to their noise 
and restlessness. When they came in with 
Nettie, as was inevitable, Mrs. Fred sus- 
tained the invasion with fretful looks and a 


90 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


certain peevish abstraction. She was evi- 
dently interrupted by the rapid entrance, 
which w'as as unwelcome as it was hasty. 
Cold though the night was, Mrs. Fred, lean- 
ing back upon her sofa, fanned her pink 
cheeks with her handkerchief, and looked 
annoyed as well as disturbed when her chil- 
dren came trooping into the room clamorous 
for tea behind the little impetuous figure 
which at once hushed and protected them. 
Susan became silent all at once, sank back 
on the sofa, and concealed the faded flush 
upon her cheeks and the embarrassed con- 
scious air she wore behind the handkerchief 
which she used so assiduously. Neither she 
nor her visitor took much share in the con- 
versation that rose round the domestic table. 
Nettie, too, was sufficiently absorbed in her 
own concerns to say little, and nobody there 
was sufficiently observant to remark what a 
sudden breath of haste and nervous decision 
inspired the little household ruler as she dis- 
pensed the family bread and butter. When 
tea was over, Nettie sent her children out of 
the way with peremptory distinctness, and 
stayed behind them to make her communi- 
cation. If she noticed vaguely a certain con- 
fused impatience and desire to get rid of her 
in the looks of her sister and the Australian 
she attached no distinct meaning to it, but 
spoke out with all the simplicity of an inde- 
pendent power, knowing all authority and ex- 
ecutive force to lie in her own hands alone. 

“When do you think you can be ready 
to start My mind is made up. I shall 
set to work immediately to prepare,” said 
Nettie. “ Now, look here, Susan ; you 
have been thinking of it for months, so it is 
not like taking you by surprise. There is a 
ship that sails on the 24th. If everything 
is packed and ready, will you consent to go 
on that day ? ” 

Mrs. Fred started with unfeigned sur- 
prise, and, not without a little consternation, 
turned her eyes towards her friend before 
answering her sister. “ It is just Nettie’s 
way,” cried Susan, “just how she always does 
— holds out against you to the very last, and 
then turns round and darts off before you 
can draw your breath. The twenty-fourth ! 
and this is the nineteenth !, Of course we 
can’t do it, Nettie. I shall want quantities 
of things, and Mr. Chatham, you know, is 
not used to your ways, and can’t be whisked 
off in a minute whenever you please.” 


“ I dare say it’s very kind of Mr. Chat- 
ham,” said Nettie ; “ but I can take you 
out very well by myself — just as w'cll as I 
brought you here. And I can’t afford to 
get you quantities of things, Susan. So 
please to understand I am going off to pack 
up, and on the 24th we shall go.” 

Once more, under Nettie’s impatient 
eyes, a look and a smile passed between her 
sister and the Australian. Never very pa- 
tient at any time, the girl was entirely ag- 
gravated out of all toleration now'. 

“ I can’t tell what you may have to smile 
to each other about,” said Nettie. “ It is. 
no very smiling business to me. But since 
I am driven to it, I shall go at once or not 
at all. And so that you understand me, that 
is all I want to say.” 

With which words she disappeared sud- 
denly to the multitudinous work that lay 
before her, thinking as little of Susan’s op- ; 
position as of*the clamor raised by the chil- 
dren, when the hard sentence of going half 
an hour earlier to bed was pronounced upon 
them. Nettie’s haste and peremptoriness 
were mixed, if it must be told, with a little 
resentment against the world in general. 
She had ceased being sad — she w'as roused 
and indignant. By the time she had sub- 
dued the refractory chilcken, and disposed 
of them for the night, those vast Australian 
boxes, w'hich they had brought with them 
across the seas, w'ere placed in the little 
hall, under the pale light of the lamp, ready 
for the -process of packing, into which Net- 
tie plunged without a moment’s interval. 
While Mrs. Smith told Edward Bider her 
story, Nettie was flying up and down stairs 
with armfuls of things to be packed, and 
pressing Smith himself into her service. 
Ere long the hall was piled with heaps of 
personal property, ready to be transferred 
to those big receptacles. In the excitement 
of the work her spirit rose. The headlong 
haste with which she carried on her opera- 
tions kept her mind in balance. Once or 
twice Susan peeped out from the parlor 
door, and something like an echo of laugh- 
ter rang out into the hall after one of those 
inspections. Nettie took no notice either of 
the look or the laugh. She built in those 
piles of baggage with the rapidest symmet- 
rical arrangement, to the admiration of 
Smith, who stood wondering by, and did 
what he could to help her, with troubled 


THE DOCTO] 

good-nature. She did not stop to make 
any sentimental reflections, or to think of 
the thankless office to which she was about 
to confirm herself beyond remedy by this 
sudden and precipitate step. Thinking had 
done Nettie little good hitherto. She felt 
herself on her true ground again, when she 
took to doing instead. The lamp burned 
dimly overhead, throwing down a light 
confused with frost upon the hall, all en- 
cumbered w'ith the goods of the Avandering 
family. Perhaps it was Avith a certain un- 
conscious symbolism that Nettie buried her 
own personal Avardrobe deep in the loAvest 
depths, making that the foundation for all 
the after superstructure. Smith stood by, 
ready to hand her anything she might Avant, 
gazing at her Avith doubtful amazement. 
The idea of sotting off to Australia at a 
foAV days’ notice filled liim with respect and 
admiration. 

“ A matter of a three months’ voyage,” 
said Smith ; “ and if I might make bold to 
ask, Miss, if the Aveather aint too bad for 
anything, how will you pass away the time 
on board ship Avhen there aint nobody to 
speak to ? but, to be sure, the gentleman — ” 

“ The gentleman is not going Avith us,” said 
Nettie, peremptorily — “ and there’s the chil- 
dren to pass aAvay the time. My time passes 
too quick, Avhatever other people’s may do. 
Where is Mrs. Smith, that I see nothing of 
her to-night ? Gone out ? how very odd 
she should go out now, of all times in th&- 
world. Where has she gone, do you*sup- 
pose? Not to be ungrateful to you, Avho 
are very kind, a woman is, of course, tAventy 
times the use a man is, in most things. 
Thank you — not that j those colored frocks 
now — there ! that bundle Avith the pink and 
the blue. One AA'ould suppose that even a 
man might knoAV colored fi’oeks Avhen he saAv 
them,” said Nettie, Avith despairing resigna- 
tion, springing up from her knees to seize 
what she Avanted. “ Thank you — I think, 
perhaps, if you would just go and make 
yourself comfortable, and read your paper, 
I should get on better. I am not used to 
having anybody to help me. I get on quite 
as Avell, thank you, by myself.” 

Smith withdreAv, not Avithout some con- 
fusion and discomfort, to his condemned 
cell, and Nettie w'ent on silent and SAvift 
with her labors. “ Quite as well ! better ! ” 
said Nettie to herself. “ Other people never 


I’S FAMILY. 91 

will understand. Noav, I know better than 
to try anybody.” If that hasty breath Avas 
a sigh, there was little sound of sorroAv in 
it. It Avas a little gust of impatience, indig- 
nation, intolerance even, and hasty self- 
assertion. She alone knew Avhat she could 
do, and must do. Not one other soul in the 
Avorld beside could enter into her inevitable 
work and way. 

Nettie did not hear the footstep Avhich she 
might have recognized ringing rapidly down 
the frosty road. She Avas too busy rustling 
about with perpetual motion, folding and re- 
folding, and smoothing into miraculous com- 
pactness all the heterogeneous elements of 
that mass. When a sudden knock came to 
the door she started, struck with alarm, 
then paused a moment, looking round her, 
and, perceiving at one hasty glance that 
nobody could possibly enter without seeing 
both herself and her occupation, made one 
prompt step to the door, which nobody ap- 
peared to open. It Avas Mrs. Smith, no 
doubt; but the sudden breathless flutter 
which came upon Nettie cast doubts upon 
that rapid conclusion. She opened it quickly, 
with a certain breathless, sudden prompti- 
tude, and looked out pale and dauntless, un- 
derstanding by instinct that some new trial 
to her fortitude was there. On the other 
hand, Edward Eider pressed in suddenly, 
almost Avithout perceiving it was Nettie. 
They were both standing in the hall to- 
gether, before they fully recognized each 
other. Then the doctor, gazing round him 
at the unusual confusion, gave an involun- 
tary groan out of the depths of his heart. 
“ Then it is true ! ” said Dr. Eider. He 
stood among the chaos, and saw all his OAvn 
dreams broken up and shattered in pieces. 
Even passion failed him in that first bitter- 
ness of conviction. Nettie stood opposite, 
with the sleeves of her black dress turned 
up from her little white nimble Avrists, her 
hair pushed back from her cheeks, pushed 
quite behind one delicate ear, her eyes 
shining Avith all those lights of energy and 
purpose which came to them as soon as 
she took up her OAvn character again. She 
met his eye AA’ith a little air of defiance, in- 
voluntary, and almost unconscious. “ It is 
quite true,” said Nettie, bursting forth in 
sudden self justification ; “ I have my work 
to do, and I must do it as best I can. I 
cannot keep considering you all, and losing 


92 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


my life. I must do what God has given me 
to do, or I must die.” 

Never had Nettie been so near breaking 
down, and falling into sudden womanish 
tears and despair. She would not yield to 
the overpowering momentary passion. She 
clutched at the bundle of frocks again, and 
made room for them spasmodically in the 
box which she had already packed. Edward 
Eider stood silent, gazing at her as in her 
sudden anguish Nettie pulled down and re- 
constructed that curious honeycomb. But 
he had not come here merely to gaze, while 
the catastrophe was preparing. He went 
up and seized her busy hands, raised her up 
in spite of her resistance, and thrust away, 
with an exclamation of disgust, that great 
box, in which all his hopes were being packed 
away. “ There is first a question to settle 
between you and me,” cried the doctor ; 
“ you shall not do it. No ! I forbid it, 
Nettie. Because you are wilful,” cried Ed- 
ward Eider, hoarse and violent, grasping 
the hands tighter, with a strain in which 
other passions than love mingled, “ am. I to 
give up all the rights of a man ? You are 
going away without ever giving me just 
w^arning — without a word, without a sign ; 
and you think I will permit it, Nettie ? 
Never — by Heaven ! ” 

“ Dr. Edward,” said Nettie, trembling, 
half with terror, half with resolution, “ you 
have no authority over me. We are two 
people — we are not one. I should not have 
gone away without a w^ord or a sign. I 
should have said good-by to you, whatever 
had happened ; but that is different from 
permitting or forbidding. Let us say good- 
by now', and get it over, if that will please 
you better,” she cried, drawing her hands 
from his grasp ; “ but I do not interfere 
with your business, and I must do mine my 
own way.” 

The doctor was in no mood to argue. He 
thrust the big box she had packed away into 
a corner, and closed it with a vindictive 
clang. It gave him a little room to move 
in that little commonplace hall, with its dim 
lamp, which had witnessed so many of the 
most memorable scenes of his life. “ Look 
here,” cried Dr. Eider ; “ authority has lit- 
tle to do with it. If you had been my wife, 
Nettie, to be sure you could not have de- 
serted me. It is as great cruelty ; it is as 
hard upon me, this you are trying to do, I 


have submitted hitherto, and Heaven knows 
it has been bitter enough ; and you scorn me 
for my submission,” said the doctor making 
the discovery by instinct. “ When a fellow 
obeys you, it is only contempt you feel for 
him ; but I tell you, Nettie, I will bear it no 
longer. You shall not go away. This is 
not to be. I will neither say good-by, nor 
think of it. What is your business is my 
business ; and I declare to you, you shall 
not go -unless I go too. Ah — I forgot. They 
tell me there is a fellow, an Australian, who 
ventures to pretend. I don’t mean to say I 
believe it. You think he will not object to 
your burdens ! Nettie ! Don’t let us kill 
each other. Let us take all the world on 
our shoulders,” cried the doctor, drawing 
near again, wdth passionate looks, “ rather 
than part ! ” 

There was a pause — neither of them could 
speak at that moment. Nettie, who felt her 
resolution going, her heart melting, yet 
knew she dared not give w'ay, clasped her 
hands tight in each other and stood trem- 
bling, yet refusing to tremble ; collecting i 
her voice and thoughts. The doctor occu- I 
pied that moment of suspense in a way | 
which might have looked ludicrous in other 
circumstances, but was a relief to the pas- I 
sion that possessed him. He dragged the ^ 
other vast Australian box to the same corner 
where he had set the first, and piled them 
one above the other. Then he collected | 
W’ith awkward care all the heaps of gar- 
ments which lay about, and carried them ofi ! 
in the other direction to the stairs, where he ’ 
laid them carefully with a clumsy tender- 
ness. When he had swept away all these 
encumbrances, as by a sudden gust of wind, 
he came back to Nettie, and once more 
clasped the firm hands which held each 
other fast. She broke away from him with 
a sudden cry, — 

“ You acknowledged it was impossible ! ” 
cried Nettie. “ It is not my doing, or any- 
body’s ; no one shall take the world on his 
shoulders for my sake — I ask nobody to bear 
my burdens. Thank you for not believing 
it — that is a comfort at least. Never, surely, 
any one else— and not you, not you ! Dr. 
Edward, let us make an end of it. I will 
never consent to put my yoke upon your 
shoulders, but I — I wdll never forgot you or 
blame you any more. It is all hard, but we 
cannot help it. Good-by— don’t make it 


THE doctor’s family. 93 


burden you, who are the only one that — 
good-b)’ — no more — don’t say any more.” 

At this moment the parlor-door opened 
suddenly — Nettie’s trembling mouth and 
frame, and the wild protest and contradic- 
tion which were bursting from the lips of 
the doctor, were lost upon the spectator ab- 
sorbed in her own affairs, and full of excite- 
ment on her own account, who looked out. 
“ Perhaps Mr. Edward will walk in,” said 
Mrs. Fred. “Now he is here to witness 
what I mean, I should like to speak to you, 
please, Nettie. I did not think I should 
ever appeal to you, Mr. Edward, against 
Nettie’s wdlfulness — but, really now, we, 
none of us, can put up with it any longer. 
Please to walk in and hear what I’ve got to 
say.” 

The big Bushman stood before the little 
fire in the parlor, extinguishing its tiny glow 
with his vast shadow. The lamp burned 
dimly upon the table. A certain air of con- 
fusion was in the room. Perhaps it was be- 
cause Nettie had already swept her own 
particular belongings out of that apart- 
ment, which once to the doctor’s eyes, had 
breathed of her presence in every corner — 
but it did not look like Nettie’s parlor to- 
night. Mrs. Fred, with the broad white 
bands of her cap streaming over her black 
dress, had just assumed her place on the 
sofa, which was her domestic throne. Net- 
tie, much startled and taken by surprise, 
stood by the table, waiting with a certain 
air of wondering impatience what was to be 
said to her — with still the sleeves turned up 
from her tiny wrists, and her fingers uncon- 
sciously busy expressing her restless intol- 
erance of this delay by a hundred involun- 
tary tricks and movements. The doctor 
stood close by her, looking only at Nettie, 
watching her with eyes intent as if she might 
suddenly disappear from under his very gaze. 
As for the Australian, he stood uneasy under 
Nettie’s rapid, investigating glance, and the 
slower survey which Dr. Rider made on en- 
tering. He plucked at his big beard, and 
spread out his large person with a confusion 
and embarrassment rather more than merely 
belonged to the stranger in a family party; 
while Mrs. Fred, upon her sofa, took up her 
handkerchief and once more began to fan 
her pink cheeks. What was coming ? After 
a moment’s pause, upon which Nettie could 


scarcely keep herself from breaking, Susan 
spoke. 

“ Nettie has always had the upper hand 
so much that she thinks I am always to do 
exactly as she pleases,” burst forth Mrs. 
Fred ; “ and I don’t doubt poor Fred en- 
couraged her in it, because he felt he was 
obliged to my family, and always gave in to 
her ; but now I have somebody to stand by 
me,” added Susan, fanning still more vio- 
lently, and with a sound in her voice which 
betrayed a possibility of tears — “ now I have 
somebody to stand by me — I tell you once 
for all, Nettie, I will not go on the 24th.” 

Nettie gazed at her sister in silence, with- 
out attempting to say anything. Then she 
lifted her eyes inquiringly to the Australian, 
in his uneasy spectator position before the 
fire. She was not much discomposed, evi- 
dently, by that sudden assertion of will, — 
possibly Nettie was used to it, — but she 
looked curious and roused, and rather eager 
to know what was it now ? 

“ I will not go on the 24th,” cried Mrs. 
Fred, with an hysterical toss of her head. “ I 
will not be treated like a child and told to 
get ready whenever Nettie pleases. She 
pretends it is all for our sake, but it is for 
the sake of having her own will, and because 
she has taken a sudden disgust at some- 
thing. I asked you in, Mr. Edward, because 
you are her friend, and because you are the 
children’s uncle, and ought to know how 
they are provided for. Mr. Chatham and 
I,” said Susan, overcome by her feelings, 
and agitating the handkerchief violently, 
“ have settled — to be — married first before 
we set out.” 

If a shell had fallen in the peaceful apart- 
ment, the effect could not have been more 
startling. The two who had been called in 
to receive that intimation, and who up to 
this moment had been standing together lis- 
tening languidly enough, too much absorbed 
in the matter between themselves to be very 
deeply concerned about anything Mrs. Fred 
could say or do, fell suddenly apaft with the 
wildest amazement in their looks. “ Susan, 
you are mad ! ” cried Nettie^ gazing aghast 
at her sister, with an air of mingled aston- 
ishment and incredulity. The doctor, too 
much excited to receive with ordinary de- 
corum information so important, made a 
sudden step up tq the big emban-assed Aus- 


94 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


tralian, who stood before the fire gazing into 
vacancy, and looking the very embodiment 
of conscious awkwardness. Dr. Rider 
stretched out both his hands and grasped 
the gigantic fist of the Bushman with an ef- 
fusion which took that worthy altogether by 
surprise. “ My dear fellow, I wish you joy 
— I wish you joy. Anything I can be of use 
to you in, command me ! ” cried the doc- 
tor, with a suppressed shout of half-incredu- 
lous triumph. Then he returned restlessly 
towards Nettie — they all turned to her with 
instinctive curiosity. Never in all her 
troubles had Nettie been so pale ; she looked 
in her sister’s face with a kind of despair. 

“ Is this true, Susan ? ” she said, with a 
sorrowful w’onder as different as possible 
from the doctor’s joyful surprise— “not some- 
thing said to vex us — really true ? And this 
has been going on, and I knew nothing of 
it ; and all this time you have been urging 
me to go back to the colony — me — as if you 
had no other thoughts. If you had made up 
your mind to this, what was the use of driv- 
ing me desperate ? ” cried Nettie, in a sud- 
den outburst of that uhcomprehension which 
aches in generous hearts. Then she stopped 
suddenly and looked from her sister, utter- 
ing suppressed sobs, and hiding her face in 
her handkerchief on the sofa, to the Austra- 
lian before the fire. “ What is the good of 
talking ? ” said Nettie, with a certain indig- 
nant impatient indulgence, coming to an ab- 
rupt conclusion. Nobody knew so well as 
she did how utterly useless it was to remon- 
strate or complain. She dropped into the 
nearest chair, and began with hasty, tremu- 
lous hands to smooth down the cuffs of her 
black sleeves. In the bitterness of the mo- 
ment it was not the sudden deliverance, but 
the heartlessness and domestic treachery that 
struck Nettie. She, the champion and de- 
fender of this helpless family for years — who 
had given them bread, and served it to them 
with her own cheerful, unwearied hands — 
who had protected as w^ell as provided for 
them in her dauntless innocence and youth. 
When she was thus cast off on the brink of 
the costliest sacrifice of all, it was not the 
delightful sensation of freedom which oc- 
curred to Nettie. She fell back with a si- 
lent pang of injury s^velling in her heart, 
and, ail tremulous and hasty, gave her agi- 
tated attention to the simple act of smooth- 
ing down her sleeves — a simple but symbol- 


ical act, w’hich conveyed a w’orld of meaning 
to the mind of the doctor as he stood watch- 
ing her. The w’ork she had meant to do 
was over. Nettie’s occupation was gone. 
With the next act of the domestic drama she 
had nothing to do. For the first time in her 
life utterly vanquished, with silent prompti- 
tude she abdicated on the instant. She 
seemed unable to strike a blow for the lead- 
ership thus snatched from her hands. With 
proud surprise and magnanimity she with- 
drew, forbearing even the useless reproaches 
of which she had impatiently asked, “ What 
was the good ? ” Never abdicated emperor 
laid aside his robes with more ominous sig- 
nificance, than Nettie, with fingers trem- 
bling between haste and agitation smoothed 
down round her shapely wrists those turned- 
up sleeves. 

The doctor’s better genius saved him from 
driving the indignant Titania desperate at 
that critical moment by any ill-advised re- 
joicings ; and the sight of Nettie’s agitation 
so far calmed Dr. Rider that he made the 
mos.t sober and decorous congratulations to^ 
the sister-in-law’, w'hom for the first time hej 
felt grateful to. Perhaps, had he been lessj 
absorbed in his own affairs, he could scarcely 
have failed to remember how, not yet a year 
ago, the shabby form of Fred lay on that 
same sofa from Avhich Susan had announced 
her new prospects ; but in this unexampled 
revolution of affairs no thought of Fred dis- 
turbed his brother, whose mind was thor- 
oughly occupied with the sudden tumult of 
his own hopes. “ Oh, yes, I hope I shall be 
happy at last. After all my troXibles, I have 
to look to myself, Mr. Edw'ard ; and your 
poor brother would have been the last to 
blame me,” sobbed Mrs. Fred, with invol- 
untary self-vindication. Then followed a 
pause. The change was too sudden and ex- 
traordinary, and involved results too deeply 
important to every individual present, to 
make words possible. Mrs. Fred, with her 
face buried in her handkerchief, and Nettie, 
her whole frame thrilling with mortification 
and failure, tremulously trying to button her 
sleeves, and bestowing her w'hole mind upon 
that operation, were discouraging interlo- 
cutors ; and after the doctor and the Bush- 
man had shaken hands, their pow'ers of com- 
munication were exhausted. The silence 
was at length broken by the Australian, who, 
clearing his voice between every three words, 


I 


THE doctor’s family. 95 


delivered his embarrassed sentiments as fol- 
lows : — 

“ I trust, Miss Nettie, you’ll not think 
you’ve been unfairly dealt by, or that any 
change is necessary so far as you are con- 
cerned. Of course,” said Mr. Chatham, 
growing red, and plucking at his beard, 
“ neither your sister nor I — found out — till 
quite lately — how things were going to be ; 
and as for you making any change in con- 
sequence, or thinking w’e could be anything 
but glad to have you wdth us ” 

Here the alarming countenance of Nettie, 
who had left off buttoning her sleeves, 
brought her new relation to a sudden stop. 
Under the blaze of her inquiring eyes the 
Bushman could go no farther. He looked 
at Susan for assistance, but Susan was still 
absorbed in her handkerchief ; and while he 
paused for expression, the little abdicated 
monarch took up the broken thread. 

“ Thank you,” said Nettie, rising sud- 
denly ; “ I knew you were honest. It is 
very good of you, too, to be glad to have 
me with you. You don’t know any better. 
I’m abdicated, Mr. Chatham j but because 
it’s rather startling to have one’s business 
taken out of one’s hands like this, it will be 
very kind of everybody not to say anything 
more to-night. I don’t quite understand it 
all just at this moment. Good-night, Dr. 
Edward. We can talk to-morrow, please ; 
not to-night. You surely understand me, 
don’t you ? When one’s life is changed all 
in a moment, one does not exactly see where 
one is standing just at once. Good-night. 
I mean what I say,” she continued, holding 
her head high with restrained excitement, 
and trying to conceal the nervous agitation 
which possessed her as the doctor hastened 
before her to open the door. “ Don’t come 
after me, please ; don’t say anything : I can- 
not bear any more to-night.” 

“ But to-morrow,” said the doctor, hold- 
ing fast the trembling hand. Nettie was too 
much overstrained and excited to speak 
more. A single sudden sob burst from her 
as she drew her hand out of his, and dis- 
^ appeared like a flying sprite. The doctor 
saw' the heaving of her breast, the height of 
self-restraint which could go no further. He 
went back into the parlor like a true lover, 
and spied no more upon Nettie’s hour of 
w'eakness. Without her, it looked a vulgar 
scene enough in that little sitting-room, from 


which the smoke of Fred’s pipe had never 
fairly disappeared, and where Fred himself 
had lain in dismal state. Dr. Bidcr. said 
a hasty good-night to Fred’s successor, and 
went off hurriedly into the changed world 
which surrounded that unconscious cottage. 
Though the frost had not relaxed, and the 
air breathed no balm, no sudden leap from 
December to June could have changed the 
atmosphere so entirely to the excited way- 
farer who traced back the joyful path tow'ards 
the lights of Carlingford twinkling brilliant 
through the Christmas frost. As he paused 
to look back upon that house which now 
contained all his hopes, a sudden shadow 
appeared at a lighted window, looking out. 
Nettie could not see the owner of the foot- 
steps that moved her to that sudden invol- 
untary expression of what was in her 
thoughts, but he could see her standing full 
in the light, and the sight went to the doc- 
tor’s heart. He took off his hat insanely 
in the darkness and waved his hand to her, 
though she could not see him ; and, after 
the shadow had disappeared, continued to 
stand w'atching w’ith tender folly if perhaps 
some indication of Nettie’s presence might 
again reveal itself. He w'alked upon air as 
he went back, at last, cold but joyful,' through 
the blank solitude of Grange Lane. Noth- 
ing could have come amiss to the doctor 
in that dawn of happiness. He could have 
found it in his heart to mount his drag again 
and drive ten miles in celestial patience at 
the call of any capricious invalid. He was 
half disappointed to find no summons await- 
ing him when he went home — no outlet for 
the universal charity and loving-kindness 
that possessed him. Instead, he set his 
easy-chair tenderly by the side of the blaz- 
ing fire, and, drawing another chair oppo- 
site, gazed with sweet smiles at the vision- 
ary Nettie, who once had taken up her po- 
sition there. Was it by prophetic instinct 
that the little colonial girl, whose first ap- 
pearance so discomposed the doctor, had as- 
sumed that place ? Dr. Rider contemplated 
the empty chair with smiles that would have 
compromised his character for sanity with any 
uninstructed observer. When the mournful 
Mary disturbed his reverie by her noiseless 
and penitent entrance with the little supper 
which she meant at once for a peace-ofier- 
ing and compensation for the dinner lost, 
she carried down-stairs with her a vivid im- 


96 CHRONICLES OF 

pression that somebody had left her master 
a fortune. Under such beatific circumstances 
closed the evening that had opened amid 
such clouds. Henceforth, so far as the doc- 
tor could read the future, no difficulties but 
those common to all wooers beset the course 
of his true love. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

When the red gleams of the early sun- 
shine shone into that window from which 
Nettie had looked out last night, the wintry 
light came in with agitating revelations not 
simply upon another morning, but upon a 
new world. As usual, Nettie’s thoughts 
were expressed in things tangible. She had 
risen from her sleepless bed while it was still 
almost dark, and to look at her now, a 
stranger might have supposed her to be 
proceeding with her last night’s work with 
the constancy of a monomaniac. Little 
Freddy sat up in his crib rubbing his eyes 
and marvelling what Nettie could be about, 
as indeed everybody might have marvelled. 
With all those boxes and drawers about, 
and heaps of personal belongings, what was 
she going to do ? She could not have an- 
swered the question without pain ; but had 
you waited long enough, Nettie’s object 
would have been apparent. Not entirely 
free of that air of agitated haste — not re- 
covered of the excitement of this discovery, 
she was relieving her restless activity by a 
significant re-arrangement of all the posses- 
sions of the family. She was separating 
with rapid fingers those stores which had 
hitherto lain lovingly together common prop- 
erty. For the first time for years Nettie 
had set herself to discriminate what be- 
longed to herself from the general store ; 
and, perhaps by way of softening that dis- 
junction, was separating into harmonious 
order the little wardrobes which were no 
longer to be under her charge. Freddy 
opened his eyes to see all his own special be- 
longings, articles which he recognized with 
all the tenacious proprietorship of child- 
hood, going into one little box by them- 
selves in dreadful isolation. The child did 
not know what horrible sentence might have 
been passed upon him while he slept. He 
gazed at those swift, inexorable fingers with 
a gradual sob rising in his poor little breast. 
That silent tempest heaved and rose as he 
saw all the well-known items following each 


CARLINGFORD. 

other ; and when his last new acquisition, 
the latest addition to his wardrobe, lay sol- 
emnly smoothed down upon the top, Fred- 
dy’s patience could bear no more. Bursting 
into a long howl of affliction, he called aloud 
upon Nettie to explain that mystery. Was 
he going to be sent away ? Was some mys- 
terious executioner, black man, or other hor- 
rid vision of fate, coming for the victim ? 
Freddy’s appeal roused from her work the i 
abdicated family sovereign. “ If I’m to be | 
sent away, I sha’n’t go ! ” cried Freddy. j 
“ I’ll run off, and come back again. I sha’n’t, i 
go anywhere unless you go, Nettie. I’ll , 
hold on so fast, you can’t put me away ; j 

and, oh. I’ll be good!— I’ll be so good ! ” j 

Nettie, who was not much given to caresses, i 
came up and put sudden arms round her 
special nursling. She laid her cheek to his, 
with a little outbreak of natural emotion. j 
“It is I who am to be sent away ! ” cried , 
Nettie, yielding for a moment to the natural 
bitterness. Then she bethought herself of [ 
certain thoughts of comfort which had not 
failed to interject themselves into her heart, 
and withdrew with a little precipitation, 
alarmed by the inconsistency — the insincer- 
ity of her feelings. “ Get up, Freddy ; you 
are not going away, except home to the 
colony, where you want to go,” she said. 

“ Be good, all the same ; for you know you 
must not trouble mamma. And make haste, 
and don’t be always calling for Nettie. 
Don’t you know you must do without Net- 
tie some time? Jump up, and be a man.” 

“ When I am a man, I sha’n’t want you,” 
said Freddy, getting up with reluctance ; 

“ but I can’t be a man now. And what am 
I to do with the buttons if you won’t help 
me? I shall not have buttons like those 
when I am a man.” 

It was not in human nature to refrain from 
giving the little savage an admonitory shake. 

“ That .is all I am good for — nothing but but- 
tons ! ” said Nettie, with whimsical mortifi- 
cation. When they went down to breakfast, 
she sent the child before her, and came last 
instead of first, waiting till they were all as- 
sembled. Mrs. Fred watched her advent . 
with apprehensive eyes. Thinking it over 
after her first triumph, it occurred to Mrs. 
Fred that the loss of Nettie would make a 
serious difference to her own comfort. Who 
was to take charge of the children, and con- 
duct those vulgar affairs for which Susan’s 


THE doctor’s family. 


feelings disqualified her ? She did her best 
to decipher the pale face which appeared 
over the breakfast cups and saucers opposite. 
What did Nettie mean to do ? Susan re- 
volved the question in considerable panic, 
seeing but too clearly that the firm little 
hand no longer trembled, and that Nettie 
was absorbed by her own thoughts — thoughts 
with which her present companions had but 
little to do. Mrs. Fred essayed another 
stroke. 

“ Perhaps I was hasty, Nettie, last night ; 
but Richard, you know, poor fellow,” said 
Susan, “was not to be put off. It wont 
make any difference between you and me, 
Nettie dear ? We have always been so united, 
whatever has happened ; and the children-are 
so fond of you ; and as for me,” said Mrs. 
Fred, putting back the strings of her cap, 
and passing her handkerchief upon her eyes, 
“ with my health, and after all I have gone 
through, how I could ever exist without you, 
I can’t tell ; and Richard will be so pleased.” 

“ I don’t want to hear anything about 
Richard, please,” said Nettie — “ not so far 
as I am concerned. I should have taken you 
out, and taken care of you, had you chosen 
me ; but you can’t have two people, you 
know. One is enough for anybody. Never 
mind what we are talking about, Freddy. It 
is only your buttons — nothing else. As long 
as you were my busme§s, I should have 
scorned to complain,” said Nettie, with a lit- 
tle quiver of her lip. “ Nothing v/ould have 
made me forsake you, or leave you to your- 
self ; but now you are somebody else’s busi- 
ness ; and to speak of it making no differ- 
ence, and Richard being pleased, and so 
forth, as if I had nothing else to do in the 
world, and w^anted to go back to the colony ! 
It is simply not my business any longer,” 
cried Nettie, rising impatiently from her 
chair — “ that is all that can be said. But I 
sha’n’t desert you till I deliver you over to my 
successor, Susan— don’t fear.” 

“ Then you don’t feel any love for us, Net- 
tie ! It was only because you could not help 
it. Children, Nettie is going to leave us,” 
said Mrs. Fred, in a lamentable voice. 

“ Then wh,^ is to be instead of Nettie ? 
Oh, look here— I know— it’s Chatham,” said 
the little girl. 

“ I hate Chatham,” said Freddy, with a 
little shriek. “ I shall go where Nettie goes 

CHEONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


— all my things are in my box. Nettie is 
going to take me ; she loves me best of you 
all. I’ll kick Chatham if he touches me.” 

“ Why can’t some one tell Nettie she’s to 
go too ? ” said the eldest boy. “ She’s most 
good of all. AVhat does Nettie want to go 
away for ? But I don’t mind ; for we have 
to do what Nettie tells us, and nobody cares 
for Chatham,” cried the sweet child, making 
a triumphant somersault out of his chair. 
Nettie stood looking on, without attempting 
to stop the tumult that arose. She left them 
with their mother, after a few minutes, and 
went out to breathe the outside air, where at 
least there were quiet and fredom. To think, 
sa she went out into the red morning sunshine, 
that her old life was over, made Nettie’s head 
swim with bewildering giddiness. She went 
up softly, like a creature in a dream, past St. 
Roque’s, where already the Christmas deco- 
rators had begun their pretty work — that 
w'ork which, several ages ago, being yester- 
day, Nettie had taken the cliildren in to see. 
Of all things that had happened between that 
moment and this, perhaps this impulse of es- 
caping out into the open air without anything 
to do, was one of the most miraculous. In- 
sensibly Nettie’s footstep quickened as she 
became aware of that extraordinary fact. 
The hour, the temperature, the customs of 
her life, were equally against such an indul- 
gence. It was a comfort to recollect that„ 
though everything else in the universe was 
altered, the family must still have some din- , 
ner, and that it was as easy to think while 
walking to the butcher’s as while idling and 
doing nothing. She went up, accordingly, 
towards Grange Lane, in a kind of wistful 
solitude, drifted apart from her former life, 
and not yet definitely attached to any other, 
feeling as though the few passengers she met 
must perceive in her face that her whole for- 
tune was changed. It was hard for Nettie 
to realize that she could do absolutely noth- 
ing at this moment, and still harder for her 
to think that her fate lay undecided in Ed- 
ward Rider’s hands. Though she had not a 
doubt of him, yet the mere fact that it w'as 
he who must take the first step was some- 
what galling to the pride and temper of the 
little autocrat. Before she had reached the 
butcher, or even come near enough to recog- 
nize Lucy Wodehouse where she stood at the 
garden-gate, setting out for St. Roque’s, Net- 
tie heard the headlong wheels of something 
7 


98 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


approaching -which had not yet come in sight. 
She -svound herself up in a kind of nervous 
desperation for the encounter that -Nvas com- 
ing. No need to warn her who it was. No- 
body but the doctor flying upon wings of 
haste and love could drive in that break- 
neck fashion down the respectable streets of 
Carlingford. Here he came sweeping round 
that corner at the George, where Nettie her- 
self had once mounted the drag, and plunged 
down Grange Lane in a maze of speed which 
confused horse, vehicle, and driver in one 
indistinct gleaming circle to the excited eyes 
of the spectator, who forced herself to go on, 
facing them with an exertion of all her pow- 
ers, and strenuous resistance of the impulse 
to turn and escape. Why should Nettie es- 
cape ? — it must be decided one way or other. 
She held on dimly, with rapid trembling 
steps. To her own agitated mind, Nettie 
herself, kft adrift and companionless, seemed 
the suitor. The only remnants of her natu- 
ral force that remained to her united in the 
one resolution not to run away. 

It, was well for the doctor that his little 
groom had the eyes and activity of a mon- 
key, and knew the exact moment at which 
to dart forward and catch the reins which 
his master flung at him, almost without 
pausing in his perilous career. The doctor 
made a leap out of the drag, which was more 
like that of a mad adventurer than a man 
whose business it was to keep other people’s 
.limbs in due repair. Before Nettie was 
aware that he had stopped, he was by her side. 

“Dr. Edward,” she exclaimed, breath- 
lessly, “ hear me first ! Now I am left un- 
restrained, but I am not without resources. 
Don’t think you are bound in honor to say 
•anything over again. What may have gone 
before I forget now. I will not hold you to 
your word. You are not to have pity upon 
me ! ” cried Nettie, not well aware what she 
was saying. The doctor drew her arm into 
his ; found out, sorely against her will, that 
she was ttembling, and held her fast, not 
without a sympathetic tremor in the arm on 
which she was constrained to lean. 

“ But I hold you to yours ! ” said the doc- 
tor ; “ there has not been any obstacle be- 
tween us for months but this ; and now it is 
gone, do you think I will forget what you 
have said, Nettie ? You told me it was im- 
possible once ” 

“ And you did not contradict me, Dr. Ed- 


ward,” said the wilful creature withdrawing 
her hand from his arm. “ I can walk very 
well by myself, thank you. You did not 
contradict me ! You were content to submit 
to what could not be helped. And so am I. 
An obstacle which is only removed by Rich- 
ard Chatham,” said Nettie, with female cru- 
elty, turning her eyes full and suddenly upon 
her unhappy lover, “ does not count for much. 
I do not hold you to anything. We are both 
free.” 

What dismayed answer the doctor might 
have made to this heartless speech can never 
be known. He was so entirely taken aback 
that he paused, clearing his throat with but 
one amazed exclamation of her name ; but 
before his astonishment and indignation had 
shaped itself into words, their interview was 
interrupted. An irregular patter of hasty 
little steps, and outcries of a childish voice 
behind, had not caught the attention of either 
in that moment of excitement ; but just as 
Nettie delivered this cruel outbreak of fem- 
inine pride and self-assertion, the little. pur- 
suing figure made up to them, and plunged 
at her dress. Freddy, in primitive uncon- 
cern for anybody but himself, rushed head- 
foremost between these two at the critical 
instant. He made a clutch at Nettie with 
one hand, and with all the force of the other 
thrust away the astonished doctor. Freddy’s 
errand was of life or death. 

“ I sha’n’t go with any one but Nettie,” 
cried the child, clinging to her dress. “ I 
hate Chatham and everybody. I will jump 
into the sea and swim back again. I will 
never, never leave go of her if you should 
cut my hands off. Nettie ! Nettie ! — take 
me with you. Let me go where you are go- 
ing ! I will never be naughty any more ! I 
will never, never go away till Nettie goes. 

I love Nettie best ! Go away, all of you ! ” 
cried Freddy, in desperation, pushing off the 
doctor with hands and feet alike. “ I will 
stay with Nettie. Nobody loves Nettie but 
me.” 

Nettie had no power left to resist this new 
assault. She dropped down on one knee be- 
side the child, and clasped him to her in a 
passion of restrained tears and sobbing. . The 
emotion which her pride would not permit 
her to show before, the gathering agitation 
of the whole morning, broke forth at this ir- 
resistible touch. She held Freddy close and 
supported herself by him, leaning all her 


THE doctor’s family. 99 


troubled heart and trembling frame upon the 
little figure which clung to her bewildered, 
suddenly growing silent and afraid in that 
passionate grasp. Freddy spoke no more, 
but turned his frightened eyes upon the doc- 
tor, trembling with the great throbs of Net- 
tie’s breast. In the early wintry sunshine, 
on the quiet rural high-road, that climax of 
the gathering emotion of years befell Nettie. 
She could exercise no further s’elf-control. 
She could only hide her face, that no one 
might see, and close her quivering lips tight 
that no one might hear the bursting forth of 
her heart. No one was there either to hear 
or see — nobody but Edward Rider, who 
stood bending with sorrowful tenderness 
over the wilful fairy creature, whose words 
of defiance had scarcely died from her lips. 
It was Freddy, and not the doctor, who had 
vanquished Nettie ; but the insulted lover 
came in for his revenge. Dr. Rider raised 
her up quietly, asking no leave, and lifted 
her into the drag, where Nettie had been 
before, and where Freddy, elated and joyful, 
took his place beside the groom, convinced 
that he was to go now with the only true 
guardian his little life had known. The doc- 
tor drove down that familiar road as slowly 
as he had dashed furiously up to it. He took 
quiet possession of the agitated trembling 
creature who had carried her empire over 
herself too far. At last Nettie had broken 
down j and now he had it all his own way. 

When they came to the cottage, Mrs. Fred, 
whom excitement had raised to a trouble- 
some activity, came eagerly out to the door 
to see what had happened j and the two chil- 
dren, who, emancipated from all control, were 
sliding down the banisters of the stair, one 
after the other, in wild glee and recklessness, 
paused in their dangerous amusement to 
watch the new arrival. “ Oh I look here ; 
Nettie’s crying ! ” said one to the other, with 
calm 'observation. The words brought Net- 
tie to herself. 

“lam not crying now,” she said, waking 
into sudden strength. “ Do you want them 
to get killed before they go away, all you 
people ? Susan, go in, and never mind. I 
was not — not quite well out of doors ; but I 
don’t mean to suffer this, you know, as long 
as I am beside them. Dr. Edward, come in. 
I have something to say to you. We have 
nowhere to speak to each other but here,” 
said Nettie, pausing in the little hall, from 


which that childish tumult had died away in 
sudden awe of her presence ; “ but we have 
spoken to each other here before now. I 
did not mean to vex you then — at least, I 
did mean to vex you, but nothing more.” 
Here she paused with a sob, the echo of her 
past trouble breaking upon her words, as 
happened from time to time, like the passion 
of a child ; then burst forth again a mo- 
ment after in a sudden question. “ Will 
you let me have Freddy ? ” she cried, sur- 
rendering at discretion, and looking eagerly 
up in the doctor’s face ; “if they will leave 
him, may I keep him with me ? ” 

It is unnecessary to record the doctor’s 
answer. He would have swallowed not, 
Freddy only, but Mrs. Fred and the entire 
family, had that gulp been needful to satisfy 
Nettie, but was not sufficiently blinded to 
his own interests to grant this except under 
certain conditions satisfactory to himself. 
When the doctor mounted the drag again 
he drove away into Elysium, with a smiling 
Cupid behind him, instead of the little groom 
who had been his unconscious master’s con- 
fidant so long, and had watched the fluctua- 
tions of his wooing with such lively curiosity. 
Those patients who had paid for Dr. Rider’s 
disappointments in many a violent prescrip- 
tion, got compensation to-day in honeyed 
draughts and hopeful prognostications. 
Wherever the doctor went he saw a vision 
of that little drooping head, reposing, after 
all the agitation of the morning, in the si- 
lence and rest he had enjoined, with brilliant 
eyes half-veiled, shining with thoughts in 
which he had the greatest share ; and, with 
that picture before his eyes, went flashing 
along the wintry road with secret smiles, 
and carried hope wherever he went. Of 
course it was the merest fallacy so far as 
Nettie’s immediate occupation was concerned. 
That restless little woman had twenty times 
too much to do to think of rest — more to do 
than ever in all the suddenly changed prep- 
arations which fell upon her busy hands. 
But the doctor kept his imagination all the 
same, and pleased himself with thoughts of 
her reposing in a visionary tranquillity, 
which, wherever it was to be found, certainly 
did not exist in St. Roque’s Cottage, in that 
sudden tumult of new events and hopes. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

“ I ALWAYS thought there was good in him 
by his looks,” said Miss Wodehouse, stand- 
ing in the porch of St. Roque’s, after the 
wedding-party had gone away. “ To think 
he should have come in such a sweet way ' 
and married Mrs. Fred! iust what we all 
were wishing for, if we could have ventured . 


100 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


to think it possible. Indeed, I should have 
liked to have given Mr. Chatham^ a little 
present, just to mark my sense of his good- 
ness. Poor man ! I wonder if he repents — ” 

“ It is to be hoped not yet,” said Lucy, 
hurrying her sister away before Mr. Went- 
worth could come out and join them ; for 
affairs were seriously compromised between 
the perpetual curate and the object of his 
affections; and Lucy exhibited a certain 
acerbity under the circumstances which 
somewhat amazed the tender-hearted old 
maid. 

“When people do repent, my belief is 
that they do it directly,” said Miss Wode- 
house. “I 'dare say he can see what she is 
already, poor man ; and I hope, Lucy, it 
wont drive him into bad ways. As for Net- 
tie, I am not at all afraid about her. Even 
if they should happen to quarrel, you know, 
things will always come right. I am glad 
they were not married both at the same time. 
Nettie has such sense ! and of course, though 
it w'as the very best thing that could happen, 
and a great relief to everybody concerned, 
to be sure, one could not help being dis- 
gusted with that woman. And it is such a 
comfort they’re going aw'ay. Nettie says— 

“ Don’t you tlnnk you could walk a little 
quicker ? there is somebody in Grove Street 
that I have to see,”, said Lucy, not so much 
interested as her sister ; “ and papa will be 
home at one to lunch.” 

“ Then I shall go on, dear, if you have 
no objection, and ask when the doctor and 
Nettie are coming home,” said Miss Wode- 
house, “ and take poor little Freddy the 
cakes I promised him. Poor child ! to have 
his mother go off and marry and leave him. 
Never mind me, Lucy, dear ; I do not walk 
so quickly as you do, and besides I have to 
go home first for the cakes.” 

So saying the sisters separated ; and Miss 
Wodehouse took her gentle way to the doc- 
tor’s house, w'here everything had been 
brightened up, and where Freddy waited 
the return of his chosen guardians. It was 
still the new quarter of Carlingford, a region 
of half-built streets, vulgar new roads, and 
heaps of desolate brick and mortar. If the 
doctor had ever hoped to succeed Dr. Mar- 
joribanks in his bowery retirement in Grange 
Lane, that hope now-a-days had receded 
into the darkest distance. The little sur- 
gery round the corner still shed twinkles of 
red and blue light across that desolate tri- 
angle of unbuilt ground upon the other 
corner houses where dwelt people unknown 
to society in Carlingford, and still Dr. Rider 
consented to call himself M.R.C.S., and cul- 
tivate the patients who were afraid of a 
physician. Miss Wodehouse went in at the 
imitation of Mary to see the little drawing- 


room which the master of the house had pro- 
vided for his wife. It had been only an un- 
furnished room in Dr. Rider’s bachelor days, 
and looked out upon nothing better than 
these same new streets — the vulgar suburb 
which Carlingford disowned. Miss Wodc- 
house lingered at the window with a little 
sigh over the perversity of circumstances. 
If Miss Marjoribanks had only been Nettie, 
or Nettie Miss Marjoribanks ! If not only 
love and happiness, but the old doctor’s 
practice and savings, could but have been 
brought to heap up the measure of the 
young doctor’s good-fortune ! What a pity 
that one cannot have .everything The 
friendly visitor said so with a real sigh as 
she went down-stairs after her inspection. 
If the young people had but been settling in 
Grange Lane, in good society, and with Dr. 
Marjoribanks’ practice, this marriage would 
have been perfection indeed !. 

But when the doctor brought Nettie home, 
and set her in that easy-chair which her im- 
age had possessed so long, he saw few draw- 
backs at that moment to the felicity of his 
lot. If there was one particular in which 
his sky threatened clouds, it was not the 
want of Dr. Marjoribanks’ practice, but the 
presence of that little interloper, whom the 
doctor in his heart was apt to call by uncom- 
plimentary names, and did not regard with 
unmixed favor. But when Susan and her 
Australian were fairly gone, and all fears of 
any invasion of the other imps, which Dr. 
Rider inly dreaded up to the last moment, 
was over, Freddy grew more and more tol- 
erable. Where Fred once lay and dozed, 
and filled the doctor’s house with heavy 
fumes and discreditable gossip, a burden 
on his brother’s reluctant hospitality, little 
Freddy now obliterated that dismal memory 
with prayers and slumbers of childhood ; and 
where the discontented doctor had grumbled 
many a night and day over that bare habita- 
tion of his, which was a house, and not a 
home, Nettie diffused herself till the famil- 
iar happiness became so much a part of his 
belongings that the doctor learned to grum- 
ble once more at the womanish accessories 
which he had once missed so bitterly. * And 
the little wayward heroine who, by dint of 
hard labor and sacrifice, had triumphantly 
had her own way in St. Roque’s Cottage, 
loved her own way still in the new house, 
and had it as often as was good for her. 
But so far as this narrator knows, nothing 
calling for special record has since appeared 
in the history of the doctor’s family, thus re- 
organized under happier auspices, and dis- 
charging its duties, social and otherwise, 
though not exactly in society, to the satis- 
faction and approval of the observant pop- 
ulation of Carlingford. 


SALEM CHAPEL. IQl 


From Blackwood’s Magazine. 

CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD: SALEM 
CHAPEL. 

P.\IIT I. — CHAPTER I. 

Towards the west end of Grove Street, 
in Carlingford, on the shabby side of the 
street, stood a red brick building, present- 
ing a pinched gable terminated by a curious 
little belfry, not intended for any bell, and 
looking not unlike a handle ta lift up the 
edifice by to the public observation. This 
was Salem Chapel, the only Dissenting place 
of worship in Carlingford. It stood in a 
narrow strip of ground, just as the little 
houses 'which flanked it on either side stood 
in their gardens, except that the enclosure 
of the chapel was flowerless and sombre, and 
showed at the farther end a few sparsely 
scattered tombstones — unmeaning slabs, 
such as the English mourner loves to in- 
scribe his sorrow on. On either side of this 
little tabernacle were the humble houses— 
little detached boxes, each two stories high, 
each fronted by a little flower-plot — clean, 
respectable, meagre, little habitations, w^hich 
contributed most largely to the ranks of the 
.congregation in the Chapel. The big houses 
opposite, which turned their backs and stair- 
case windows to the street, took little notice 
of the humble Dissenting community. Twice 
in the winter, perhaps, the Misses Hem- 
mings, mild evangelical women, on whom 
the late rector — the Low-Church rector, who 
reigned before the brief and exceptional in- 
cumbency of the B,ev. Mr. Proctor — had be- 
sto'tt'ed much of his confidence, would cross 
.the street, w^hen other profitable occupations 
failed them, to hear a sjDecial sermon on a 
Sunday evening. But the Misses Hem- 
mings were the only representatives of any- 
thing which could, by the utmost stretch, be 
called Society, who ever patronized the Dis- 
senting interest in the town of Carlingford. 
Nobody from Grange Lane had ever been 
seen so much as in Grove Street on a Sun- 
day, far less in the chapel. Greengrocers, 
dealers in cheese and bacon, milkmen, with 
some dressmakers of inferior pretensions, 
, and teachers of day schools of similar hum- 
ble character, formed the Hite of the congre- 
gation. It is not to be supposed, however, 
on this account, that a prevailing aspect of 
shabbiness was upon this little community ; 
cn the contrary, the grim pews of Salem 
Chanel blushed with bright colors, and con- 


tained both dresses and faces on the sum- 
mer Sundays which the Church itself could 
scarcely have surpassed. Nor did those 
unadorned walls form a centre of asceticism 
and gloomy religiousness in the cheerful lit- 
tle town. Tea-parties were not uncommon 
occurrences — tea-parties which made the lit- 
tle tabernacle festive, in which cakes and 
oranges were difiused among the pews, and 
funny speeches made from the little platform 
underneath the pulpit, which woke the un- 
consecrated echoes with hearty outbreaks of 
laughter. Then the young people had their 
singing-class, at which they practised hymns, 
and did not despise a little flirtation ; and 
charitable societies and missionary auxil- 
iaries diversified the congregational routine, 
and kept up a brisk succession of “ Chapel 
business,” mightily like the Church business 
which occupied Mr. Wentworth and his Sis- 
ters of Mercy at St. Boque’s. To name the 
two communities, however, in the same 
breath, would have been accounted little 
short of sacrilege in Carlingford. The 
names which figured highest in the benevo- 
lent lists of Salem Chapel, were known tc 
society only as appearing, in gold letters, 
upon the backs of those mystic tradesmen’s 
books which were deposited every Monday 
in little heaps at every house in Grange 
Lane. The Dissenters, on their part, as- 
pired to no conquests in the unattainable 
territory of high life, as it existed in Carling- 
ford. They were content to keep their priv- 
ileges among themselves, and to enjoy their 
superior preaching and purity with a compas- 
sionate complacence. While Mr. Proctor 
was rector, indeed, Mr. Tozer, the butter- 
man, who was senior deacon, found it diffi- 
cult to refrain from an audible expression of 
pity for the “ Church folks ” who knew no 
better ; but, as a general rule, the. congrega- 
tion of Salem kept by itself, gleaning new 
adherents by times at an “ anniversary ” or 
the coming of a new minister, but knowing 
and keeping “ its own place ” in a manner 
edifying to behold. 

Such was the state of affairs when old Mr. 
Tufton declined in popularity, and impressed 
upon the minds of his hearers those now- 
established principles about the unfitness of 
old men for any important post, and the 
urgent necessity and duty incumbent upon 
old clergymen, old generals, old admirals, 
etc., — every aged functionary, indeed, except 


102 1# CHRONICLES O 

old statesmen — to resign in favor of younger 
men, -which have been, within recent years, 
so much enforced upon the world. To com- 
municate this opinion to the old minister 
was perhaps less difficult to Mr. Tozer and 
his brethren than it might have been to men 
more refined and less practical; but it was 
an undeniable relief to the managers of the 
chapel when grim Paralysis came mildly in 
and gave the intimation in the manner least 
calculated to wound the sufferer’s feelings. 
Mild but distinct was that undeniable warn- 
ing. The poor old minister retired, accord- 
ingly, with a purse and a presentation, and 
young Arthur Vincent, fresh from Homer- 
ton, in the bloom of hope and intellectualism, 
a young man of the newest school, w’as rec- 
ognized as pastor in his stead. 

A greater , change could not possibly have 
happened. AVhen the interesting figure of the 
young minister went up the homely pulpit- 
stairs, and appeared, white-browed, white- 
handed, in snowy linen and glossy clerical 
apparel, where old Mr. Tufton, spiritual but 
homely, had been wont to impend over the 
desk and exhort his beloved brethren, it was 
natural that a slight rustle of expectation 
should run audibly through the audience. 
Mr. Tozer looked round him proudly to note 
the sensation, and see if the Misses Ilem- 
mings, sole representatives of a cold and 
unfeeling aristocracy, were there. The fact 
was, that few of the auditors were more im- 
pressed than the Misses Hemmings, who 
were there, and who talked all the evening 
after about the young minister. What a 
sermon it was ! not much in it about the 
beloved brethren ; nothing very stimulating, 
indeed, to the sentiments and affections, ex; 
cept in the youth and good looks of the 
preacher, which naturally made a more dis- 
tinct impression upon the female portion of 
his hearers than on the stronger sex. But 
then, what eloquence ! what an amount of 
thought ! what an honest entrance into all 
the difficulties of the subject ! Mr. Tozer 
remarked afterwards that such preaching 
was food for men. It was too closely rea- 
soned out, said the excellent butterman, to 
please women or weak-minded persons ; but 
he did not doubt, for his part, that soon the 
young men of Carlingford, the hope of the 
country, would find their way to Salem. 
Under such prognostications, it was fortu- 
nate that the young minister possessed 


5’ CARLINGFORD. 

something else besides close reasoning and 
Homerton eloquence to propitiate the women 
too. 

Mr. Vincent arrived at Carlingford in the 
beginning of winter, when society in that 
town was re-assembling or at least re-ap- 
pearing, after the temporary summer seclu- 
sion. The young man knew very little of 
the community which he had assumed the 
spiritual charge of. He was almost as par- 
ticular as the Rev. Mr. Wentworth of St. 
Roque’s about the cut of his coat and the 
precision of his costume, and decidedly pre- 
ferred the word clergyman to the word min- 
ister, which latter was universally used by 
his flock ; but notwithstanding these trifling 
predilections, Mr. Vincent who had been 
brought uj) upon the Nonconformist and the 
Eclectic Beview, was strongly imj)ressed 
with the idea that the Church Establishment, 
though outwardly prosperous, was in reality a 
profoundly rotten institution ; that the N’on- 
conforming portion of the English public w^as 
the party of progress ; that the eyes of the 
world were turned upon the Dissenting in- 
terest ; and that his own youthful eloquence 
and the Voluntary principle were quite 
enough to counterbalance all the ecclesias- 
tical advantages on the other side, and make 
for himself a position of the highest influ- 
ence in his new sphere. As he walked about 
Carlingford making acquaintance with the 
place, it occurred to the young man, with a 
thrill of not ungenerous ambition, that the 
time might shortly come when Salem Chapel 
would be all too insignificant for the Non- 
conformists of this hitherto torpid place.* 
He pictured to himself how, by and by, 
those jealous doors in Grange Lane would 
fly open at his touch, and how the dormant 
minds within w^ould awake under his influ- 
ence. It was a blissful dream to the young 
pastor. Even the fact that Mr. Tozer was 
a butterman, and the other managers of the 
chapel equally humble in their pretensions, 
did not disconcert him in that flush of early 
confidence. All he wanted — all any man 
worthy of his post wanted — was a spot of 
standing-ground, and an opportunity of mak- 
ing the Truth — and himself — known. Such, 
at least, was the teaching of Homerton and 
the Dissenting organs. Young Vincent, 
well educated and enlightened according to 
his fashion, was yet so entirely unacquainted 
with any w'orld but that contracted one in 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


which he had been brought up, that he be- 
lieved all this as devoutly as Mr. Wentworth 
believed in Anglicanism, and would have 
smiled with calm scorn at any sceptic who 
ventured to doubt. Thus it w'ill be seen he 
came to Carlingford with elevated expecta- 
tions — by no means prepared to circulate 
among his flock, and say grace at Mrs. To- 
zer’s “teas,” and get up soirees to amuse 
the congregation, as Mr. Tufton had been 
accustomed to dot These secondary circum- 
stances of his charge had little share in the 
new minister’s thoughts. Somehow the tone 
of public writing has changed of late days. 
Scarcely a newspaper writer condescends 
now to address men who are not free of 
“ society,” and learned in all its w^ays. The 
Times and the magazines take it for granted 
that all their readers dine out at splendid 
tables, and are used to a solemn attendant 
beiiind their chair. Young Vincent was one 
of those who accept the flattering implica- 
tion. It is true, he saw few enough of such 
celestial scenes in his college days. But now 
that life was opening upon him, he doubted 
nothing of the society that must follow ; and 
with a swell of gratification listened when the 
advantages of Carlingford were discussed by 
some chance fellow'-travellers on the railway ; 
its pleasant parties — its nice people— Mr. 
Wodehouse’s capital dinners, and the charm- 
ing breakfasts — such a delightful novelty ! — 
so eaiy and agreeable ! — of the pretty Lady 
Western, the young dowager. In imagina- 
tion Mr. Vincent saw himself admitted to all 
these social pleasures j not that he cared for 
capital dinners more than became a young 
man, or had any special tendencies towards 
tuft-hunting, but because fancy and hope, 
and ignorance of the real world, made him 
naturally project himself into the highest 
sphere within his reach, in the simple con- 
viction that such was his natural place. 

With these thoughts, to be asked to Mrs. 
Tozer’s to tea at six o’clock, was the most 
W'onderful cold plunge for the young man. 
He shrugged his shoulders, smiled to him- 
self over the note of invitation, which, how- 
ever, was very prettily written by Phoebe, 
Mrs. Tozer’s blooming daughter, on paper 
as pink as Lady Western’s, and consented, 
as ho could not help himself. He went out 
from his nice little lodgings a little.after six, 
still smiling, and persuading himself that this 
would be quite a pleasant study of manners, 


103 

and that of course he could not do less than 
patronize the good homely people in their 
own way, whatever that might be. Mr. Vin- 
cent’s rooms were in George Street, at what 
the Grange people called the other end, in an 
imposing house with a large door, and iron 
extinguishers fixed in the railing, which had 
in their day quenched the links of the last 
century. To cross the street in his evening 
coat, and walk into the butter-shop, where 
the two white-aproned lads behind the coun- 
ter stared, and a humble member of the con- 
gregation turned sharply round, and held 
out the hand, which had just clutched a piece 
of bacon, for her minister to shake, was a 
sufficiently trying introduction to the even- 
ing’s pleasure ; but when the young pastor 
had been ushered up-stairs, the first aspect 
of the company there rather took away his 
breath, as he emerged fronf the dark stair- 
case. Tozer himself, who awaited the min- 
ister at the door, was fully habited in the 
overwhelming black suit and white tie, which 
produced so solemnizing an effect every Sun- 
day at chapel ; and the other men of the party 
were, with a few varieties, similarly attired. 
But the brilliancy of the female portion of the 
company overpowered Mr. Vincent. Mrs. 
Tozer herself sat at the end of her hospitable 
table, with all her best china tea-service set out 
before her, in a gown and cap which Grange 
Lane could not have furnished any rivals to. 
The brilliant hue of the one, and the flowers 
and feathers of the other, would require a 
more elaborate description than this chron- 
icle has space for. Nor indeed in the par- 
ticular of dress did Mrs. Tozer do more than 
hold her own among the guests who sur- 
rounded her. It was scarcely dark, and the 
twilight softened down the splendors of the 
company, and saved the dazzled eyes of 
the young pastor. He felt the grandeur 
vaguely as he came in with a sense of re- 
proof, seeing that he had evidently been 
waited fbr. He said grace devoutly when 
the tea arrived and the gas was lighted, and 
with dumb amaze gazed round him. Could 
these be the veritable womankind of Salem 
Chapel? Mr. Vincent saw bare shoulders 
and flower-wreathed heads bending over the 
laden tea-table. He saw. pretty faces and 
figures not inelegant, remarkable among 
which was Miss Phoebe’s, who had written 
him that pink note, and who herself was 
pink all over— dress, shoulders, elbows. 


104 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


cheeks, and all. Pink — not red-r—a softened 
youthful flush, which was by no means un- 
becoming to the plump full figure which had 
not an angle anywhere. As for the men, the 
lawful owners of all this feminine display? 
they huddled altogether, indisputable cheese- 
mongers as they w^ere, quite transcended and 
extinguished by their wives and daughters. 
The pastor was young and totally inexperi- 
enced. In his heart he asserted his own 
claim to an entirely different sphere ; but, 
suddenly cast into this little crowd, Mr. 
Vincent’s inclination was to join the dark 
group of husbands and fathers whom he 
Liew, and who made no false pretences. 
He was shy of venturing upon those fine 
women, who surely never could be Mrs. 
Brown of the Devonshire Dairy, and Mrs. 
Pigeon, the poulterer’s wife ; v/hereas Pigeon 
and Brown themselves w^ere exactly like 
what they always were on Sundays, if not 
perhaps a trifle graver and more depressed 
in their minds. 

“ Here’s a nice place for you, Mr. Vincent 
—quite the place for you, where you can hear 
all the music, and see all the young ladies. 
For I do suppose ministers, bein’ young, are 
like other young men,” said Mrs. Tozer, 
drawing aside her brilliant skirts to make 
room for him on the sofa. “I have a son 
myself as is at college, and feel mother-like 
to those as go in the same line. Sit you 
down comfortable, Mr. Vincent. There aint 
one here, sir, I’m proud to say, as grudges 
you the best seat.” 

“ O mamma, how could you think of 
saying such a thing!” said Phoebe, under 
her breath ; “ to be sure, Mr. Vincent never 
could think there was anybody anywhere that 
would be so wicked — and he the minister.” 

“Indeed, my dear,” said Mrs. Pigeon, 
who was close by, “ not to affront Mr. Vin- 
cent, as is deserving of our best respects. 
I’ve seen many and many’s the minister I 
wouldn’t have given up my seat to ; and I 
don’t misdoubt, sir, you’ve heard of such as 
well as we. There was Mr. Bailey, at Par- 
son’s Green, now. He went and married a 
poor bit of a governess, as common a look- 
ing creature as you could see, that set her- 
self up above the people, Mr. Vincent, and 
was too grand, sir, if you’ll believe me, to 
visit the deacons’ wives. Nobody cares less 
than me about them vain shows. What’s 
visiting, if you know the vally of your time ? 


Nothing but a laying-up of judgment. But 
I wouldn’t be put upon neither by a chit that 
got her bread out of me and my husband’s 
hard oarnin’s ; and so I told my sister, Mrs. 
Tozer, as lives at Parson’s Green.” 

“ Poor thing ! ” said the gentler Mrs. 
Tozer, “ it’s hard lines on a minister’s wifb 
to please the congregation. Mr. Vincent 
here, he’ll have to take a lesson. That Mrs. 
Bailey was pretty-looking, I must allow- ” 

“ Sweetly pretty ! ” whispered Phoebe, 
clasping her plump, pink hands. 

“Pretty-looking! I don’t say anything 
against it,” continued her mother ; “ but it’s 
hard upon a minister when his wife wont 
take no pains to please his flock. To have 
people turn up their noses at you aint pleas- 
ant ” 

“ And them getting their livin’ off you all 
the time,” cried Mrs. Pigeon, clinching the 
milder speech. * 

“ But it seems to me,” said poor Vincent, 
“that a minister can no more be said to get 
his living off you than any other man. He 
w^orks hard enough generally for wkat little 
he has. And really, Mrs. Tozer, I’d rather 
not hear all these unfortunate particulars 
about one of my brethren ” 

“ He aint one of the brethren now’,” 
broke in the poulterer’s wife. “ He’s been 
gone out o’ Parson’s Green this tw’elve- 
months. Them stuck-up ways may do with 
the Church folks as can’t help them! elves, 
but they’ll never do with us Dissenters. 
No tthat we aint as glad as can be to see 
you, Mr. Vincent, and I hope you’ll favor 
my poor house another night like you’re fa- 
voirng Mrs. Tozer’s. Mr. Tufton always said 
that was the beauty of Cai’lingford in our 
connection. Cheerful folks and no display. 
No display, you know — nothing but a hearty 
meetin’, sorry to part, and happy to meet 
again. Them’s our ways. And the better 
you know’ us, the better you’ll like us. I’ll be 
bound to say. We don’t put it all on the 
surface, Mr. Vincent,” continued Mrs. Pig- 
eon, shaking out her skirts and expanding 
herself on her chair, “ but it’s all real and 
solid ; w’hat we say we mean — and we don’t 
say no more than w’e mean — and them’s the 
kind of folks to trust to wdierever you go.” 

Poor Vincent made answ^er by an inartic- 
ulate murmur, whether of assent or dissent 
it was impossible to say ; and, inw’ardly ap- 
palled, turned his eyes towards his deacons. 


SALEM CHAPEL 


w’ho, more fortunate tlian himself, were 
standing all in a group together discussing 
chapel matters, and wisely leaving general 
conversation to the fairer portion of the com- 
pany. The unlucky minister’s secret looks 
of distress awoke the interest and sympathy 
of Phoebe, who sat in an interesting man- 
ner on a stool at her mother’s side. “ O 
mamma,” said that young lady, too bashful 
to address himself ^irectly, “ I wonder if 
Mr. Vincent plays or sings ? There are 
some such nice singers here. Perhaps we 
might have some music, if Mr. Vincent ” 

“ I don’t perform at all,” said that victim, 
— “ not in any v/ay ; but I am an exemplary 
listener. Let me take you to the piano.” 

The plump Phoebe rose after many hesita- 
tions, and, with a simper and a blush and 
pretty air of fright, took the minister’s arm. 
After all, even when the whole company is 
beneath a man’s level, it is easier to play the 
victim ui^der the suppUce inflicted by a 
pretty girl than by two mature matrons. 
Phoebe understood pretty well about her 7t’s, 
and- did not use the double negative; and 
when she rose up rustling from her low seat, 
the round, pink creature, with dimples all 
about her, was not an unpleasant object of 
contemplation. Mr. Vincent listened to her 
song with decorous interest. Perhaps it was 
just as well sung as Lucy Wodehouse in 
Grange Lane, would have sung it. When 
Phoebe had concluded, the minister was 
called to the side- of Mrs. Brown of the 
Devonshire Dairy, who had been fidgeting 
to secure him fi’om the moment he ap- 
proached the piano. She was fat and round- 
about, good woman, and had the aspect of 
sitting upon the very edge of her chair. 
She held out to the distressed pastor a hand 
covered with a rumpled white glove, which 
did not fit and had never been intended to 
fit, and beckoned to him anxiously. With 
the calmness of despair Mr. Vincent obeyed 
the call. - 

“ I have been looking so anxious to catch 
your eye, Mr. Vincent,” said Mrs. Brown ; 
“ do sit you down, now there’s a chance, and 
let me talk to you a minnit. Bless the girl ! 
there’s Miss Polly Pigeon going to play, and 
everybody can use their freedom in talking. 
For my part,” said Mrs.- Brown, securing the 
vacant chair of the performer for her captive, 
“ that’s why I like instrumeutal music best. 
When a girl sings, why, to be sure, it’s only 


105 

civil to listen — aint it now, Mr. Vincent? 
but nobody expects it of you, don’t you see, 
when she only plays. Now do you sit down. 
What I wanted to speak to you was about 
that poor creetur in Back Grove Street-— 
that’s the lane right behind the chapel. She 
do maunder on so to see the minister. Mr. 
Tozer he’s been to see her, and I sent Brown, 
but it wasn’t a bit of use. It’s you, Mr. 
Vincent, she’s awanting of. If you’ll call in 
to-morrow. I’ll show you the place myself, 
as you’re a stranger ; for, if you’ll excuse me 
saying it, I am as curious as can be to hear 
what she’s got to say.” 

“ If she has got anything to say, she might 
prefer that it was not heard,” said Vincent, 
with an attempt at a smile. “ Is she ill — 
and who is she ? I have never heard of her 
before.” 

“ Well, you see, sir, she doesn’t belong 
rightly to Salem. She’s a stranger here, 
and not a joined member ; and she aint ill 
either, as I can see — only something on her 
mind. You ministers,” said Mrs. Brovvn, 
with a look of awe, “ must have a deal of 
secrets confided to you. Folks may stand 
out against religion as long as things go on 
straight with them, but they’re sure to want 
the minister as soon as they’ve got some- 
thing on thgir mind ; and a deal better to 
have it out, and get a little comfort, than to 
bottle it all up till their latter end, like old 
Mrs. Thompson, and let it out in their will, 
to drive them as was expecting difierent dis- 
tracted. It’s a year or two since that hap- 
pened. I don’t suppose you’ve heerd tell of 
it yet. But that’s what makes old Mrs. 
Christian — I dare to say you’ve seen her at 
chapel— so uncomfortable in her feelin’s. 
She’s never got over it, sir, and never will to 
her dying day.” 

Some disappointment about money?” 
said Mr. Vincent. 

“ Poor old folks ! their daughter did very 
well for herself — and very well for them too,” 
said Mrs. Brown ; “ but it don’t make no 
difference in Mrs. Christian’s feelin’s : they’re 
living, like, on Mr. Brown the solicitor’s 
charity, you see, sir, instead of their own 
fortin, which makes a deal o’ difference. It 
would have been a fine thing for Salem too,” 
added Mrs. Brown, reflectively, “ if they had 
had the ol-d lady’s money ; for Mrs. Christian 
was always one that liked to be first, and 
stanch to her chapel, and would never have 


106 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


been wanting when the collecting-books went 
round. But it wasn’t to be, Mr. Vincent — 
that’s the short and the long of it ; and we 
never have had nobody in our connection 
W’orth speaking of in Carlingford but’s been 
in trade. And a very good thing too, as I 
tell Brown. For if there’s one thing I can’t 
abear in a chapel, it’s one set setting up 
above the rest. But bein’ all in the v^ay of 
business, except just the poor folks, as is all 
very well in their place, and never interferes 
with nothing, atid don’t count, there’s noth- 
ing but brotherly love here, which is a deal 
more than most ministers can say for their 
flocks. I’ve asked a few friends to tea, Mr. 
Vincent, on next Thursday, at six. As I 
haven’t got no daughters just out of a board- 
ing-school to write notes for me, will you 
take us in a friendly way, and just come 
without another invitation ? All our own 
folks, sir, and a comfortable evening ; and 
prayers, if you’ll he so good, at the end. I 
don’t like the new fashions, ” said Mrs. 
Brown, with a significant glance towards 
Mrs. Tozer, “ of separatin’ like heathens, 
when all’s of one connection. We might 
never meet again, Mr. Vincent. In the 
midst of life, you know, sir. You’ll not for- 
get Thursday, at six.” 

“ But,, my dear Mrs. Brown, I am very 
sorry : Thursday is one of the days I have 
specially devoted to study,” stammered forth 
the unhappy pastor. “ What with the 
Wednesday meeting and the Friday commit- 
tee ” 

Mrs. Brown drew herself up as well as the 
peculiarities of her form permitted, and her 
roseate countenance assumed a deeper glow. 
“ We’ve been in the chapel longer than 
Tozer,” said the offended deaconess. “We’ve 
never been backward in takin’ trouble, nor 
spendin’ our substance, nor puttin’ our 
hands to every good work ; and as for mak- 
in’ a difierence between one member and an- 
other, it’s what we aint been accustomed to, 
Mr. Vincent. I’m a plain woman, and speak 
my mind. Old Mr. Tufton was very partic- 
ular to show no preference. He always said, 
it never answered in a flock to show more 
friendship to one nor another ; and if it had 
been put to me, I wouldn’t have said, I as- 
sure you, sir, that it was us as was to be 
made the first example of. If I haven’t a 
daughter fresh out of a boarding-school, I’ve 
been a member at Salem five-and-twentv 


year, and had ministers in my house many’s 
the day, and as friendly as if I were a duch- 
ess ; and for charities and-such things, w'e’ve 
never been known to fail, though I say it ; 
and as for the trouble- ” 

“ But I spoke of my study,” said the poor 
minister, as she paused, her indignation 
growing too eloquent for w'ords : “ you want 
me to preach on Sunday, don’t you ? and I 
must have some time, you know, to do my 
work.” 

“ Sir,” said Mrs. Brown, severely, “ I 
know it for a fact that Mr. Wentworth of St. 
Roque’s dines out five days in the week, and 
it don’t do his sermons no injury; and w^hen 
you go out to dinner, it stands to reason it’s 
a difierent thing from a friendly tea.” 

“ Ah, yes, most likely ! ” said Mr. Vincent, 
with a heavy sigh. “ I’ll come, since you 
wish it so much ; but,” added the unlucky 
young man, wdth a melancholy attempt at a 
smile, “ you must not be too kipd to me. 
Ten much of this kind of thing, you know, 

might have an effect- ” Here he paused, 

inclined to laugh at his own powers of sar- 
casm. As chance would have it, as he 
pointed generally to the scene before them, 
the little wave of his hand seemed to Mrs. 
Brown to indicate the group round the piano, 
foremost in which was Phoebe, plump and 
pink, and full of dimples. The good mis- 
tress of the Devonshire Dairy gave her head, 
a little toss. 

“Ah!” said Mrs. Brown, wdth a sigh, 
“ you don’t know, you young men, the half 
of the tricks of them girls that look so inno- 
cent. But I don’t deny it’s a pleasant 
party,” added the deaconess, looking round 
on the company in general with some com- 
placency. “ But just you come along our 
way on Thursday, at six, and judge for your- 
self if mine aint quite as good ; though I 
have not got no daughters, Mr. Vincent,” 
she concluded, wfith severe irony, elevating 
her double chin and nodding her flowery 
head. 

The subdued minister made no reply; 
only deeper and deeper humiliation seemed 
in store for him. Was it he, the first prize- 
man of Homerton, who was supposed to be 
already smitten by the pink charms of Phoebe 
Tozer ? The unfortunate young man groaned 
in spirit, and, seizing a sudden opportunity, 
plunged into the black group of deacons, and 
tried to immerse himself iu chapel business. 


SALEM CHAPEL. IQ? 


But vain was the attempt. He was recap- 
tured and led hack in triumph to Mrs. To- 
zer’s sofa. He had to listen to more sing- 
ing, and accept another invitation to tea. 
AVhen ho got off at last, it was with a sensa- 
tion of dreadful dwindlement that poor Vin- 
cent crossed the street again to his lonely 
abode. He knocked quite humbly at the 
big door, and, with a sensation of unclerical 
rage, wondered to himself whether the police- 
man who met him knew he had been out to 
tea. Ah, blessed Mr. Wentworth of St. 
Roque’s ! The young Nonconformist sighed 
as he put on his slippers, and kicked his 
boots into a corner of his sitting-room. 
Somehow he had come down into the world 
all at once, and without expecting it. Such 
was Salem Chapel and its requirements : and 
such was Mr. Vincent’s first experience of 
social life in Carlingford. 

CHAPTER II. 

It was with a somewhat clouded aspect 
that the young pastor rose from his solitary 
breakfast-table next morning to devote him- 
self to the needful work of visiting his flock. 
The minister’s breakfast, though lonely, had 
not been without alleviations. He had the 
Carlingford Gazette at his elbow, if that was 
any comfort, and he had two letters which 
were interesting ; one was from his mother, 
a minister’s widow, humbly enough off, but 
who had brought up her son in painful gen- 
tility, and done much to give him that taste 
for ‘good society which was to come to so 
little fruition in Carlingford. Mr. Vincent 
smiled sardonically as he read his good 
mother’s questions about his “ dear people,” 
and her anxious inquiry whether he had 
found a “ pleasant circle ” in Salem. Re- 
membering the dainty little household which 
it took her so much pains and pinching to 
maintain, the contrast 'made present affairs 
still more and more distasteful to her son. 
He could fancy her tidy little figure in that 
traditionary black silk gown which never 
wore out, and the whitest of caps, gazing 
aghast at Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Tozer. But, 
nevertheless, Mrs. Vincent understood all 
about Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Tozer, and had 
ibeen very civil to such, and found them very 
^serviceable in her day, though her son, who 
knew her only in that widowed: cottage where 
she had her own way, could not have realized 
it. The other letter was from a Homerton 


chum, a young intellectual and ambitious 
Nonconformist like himself, whose epistle 
was full of confidence and hope, triumph in 
the cause, and its perpetual advance. “ We 
are priests of the poor,” said the Homerton 
enthusiast, encouraging his friend to the 
sacrifices and struggles which he presumed 
to be already surrounding him. Mr. Vin- 
cent bundled up this letter with a sigh. 
Alas ! there were no grand struggles or sac- 
rifices in Carlingford. “ The poor ” were 
mostly church-goers, as he had already dis- 
covered. It was a tolerably comfortable 
class of the community, that dreadful “ con- 
nection ” of Browns, Pigeons, and Tozers. 
Amid their rude luxuries and commonplace 
plenty, life could have no heroic circum- 
stances. The young man sighed, and did 
not feel so sure as he once did of the grand 
generalities in which his friend was still con- 
fident. K Dissenters led the van of progress 
generally, there was certainly an exception 
to be made in respect to Carlingford. And 
the previous evening’s entertainment had 
depressed the young minister’s expectations 
even of what he himself could do — a sad 
blow to a young man. He was less con- 
vinced that opportunity of utterance was all 
that was necessary to give him influence in 
the general community. He was not half 
so sure of success in opening the closed 
doors and sealed hearts of Grange Lane. 
On the whole, matters looked somewhat dis- 
couraging that particular morning, which 
was a morning in October, not otherwise de- 
pressing or disagreeable. He took his hat 
and went down-stairs with a kind of despair- 
ing determination to do his duty. There an 
encounter occurred which did not raise his 
spirits. The door was open, and his land- 
lady, who was a member of Salem Chapel, 
stood there in full relief against the day- 
light outside, taking from the hands of Miss 
Phoebe Tozer a little basket, the destination 
of which she was volubly indicating. Mr. 
Vincent appearing before Phoebe had half 
concluded her speech, that young lady grew 
blushingly embarrassed, and made haste to 
relinquish her hold of the basket. Her con- 
scious looks filled the unwitting minister 
with ignorant amaze. 

“ Oh, to think Mr. Vincent should catch 
me here ! What ever will he think ? and 
what ever will ma say ? ” cried Miss Phoebe. 
“ O Mr. Vincent, ma thought, please, you 


108 CHRONICLES O 

might perhaps like some jelly, and I said I 
would run over with it myself, as it’s so 
near, and the servant might have made a 
mistake, and ma hopes you’ll enjoy it, and 
that you liked the party last night ! ” 

“ Mrs. Tozer is very kind,” said the min- 
ister, with cloudy looks. “ Some what, did 
you say. Miss Phoebe ? ” 

“La! only some je%— nothing w^orth 
mentioning — only a shape that was over 
supper last night, and ma thought you 
wouldn’t mind,” cried the messenger, half 
alarmed by the unusual reception of her of- 
fering. Mr. Vincent turned very red, and 
looked at the basket as if he would like 
nothing better than to pitch it into the 
street ; but prudence for once restrained the 
young man. He bit his lips, and bowed, 
and ^yent upon his way, without waiting, 
as she intended he should, to escort Miss 
Phoebe back again to her paternal shop. 
Carrying his head higher than usual, and 
thrilling with offence and indignation, the 
young pastor made his way along George 
Street. It was a very trifling circumstance, 
certainly j but just when an enthusiastic 
companion writes to you about the advance 
of the glorious cause, and your own high 
vocation as a soldier of the Cross, and the 
undoubted fact that the hope of England is 
in you, to have a shape of jelly, left over 
from last night’s tea-party, sent across the 
street with complacent kindness, for your 

refreshment I It was trying. To old 

Mrs. Tufton, indeed, who had an invalid 
daughter, it might have seemed a Christian 
bounty; but to Arthur Vincent, five-and- 
twenty, a scholar and a gentleman — ah me 1 
If he had been a Christchurch man, or even. 
Fellow of Trinity, the chances are he would 
have taken it much more graciously ; for 
• then ho would have had the internal con- 
sciousness of his own dignity to support 
him ; w'hereas the sting of it all was, that 
poor young Vincent had no special right to 
his own pretensions, but had come to them 
he could not tell how ; and, in reality, had 
his mind been on a level with his fortunes, 
ought to have found the Tozers and Pigeons 
sufficiently congenial company. He went 
along George Street with troubled haste, 
pondering his sorrows — those sorrows which 
he could conflde to nobody. Was he actu- 
ally to live among these people for years — 
to have no other society — to circulate among 


CARLINGFORD. 

their tea-parties, and grow accustomed to 
their finery, and perhaps “ pay attention ” 
to Phoebe Tozer ; or, at least, suffer that 
young lady’s attentions to him ? And what 
w'ould become of him at the end ? To drop 
into a shuffling old gossip, like good old Mr. 
Tufton, seemed the best thing he could hope 
for ; and who could wonder at the mild stu- 
por of paralysis — disease not tragical, only 
drivelling — which was the last chapter of 
all? 

The poor young man accordingly marched 
along George Street deeply disconsolate. 
When he met the perpetual curate of St. 
Roque’s at the door of Masters’ bookshop — 
where, to.be sure, at that hour in the morn- 
ing, it was natural to encounter Mr. Went- 
worth — the young Nonconformist gazed at 
him with a certain wistfulness. They looked 
at each other, in fact, being much of an age, 
and not unsimilar in W'orldly means just at 
the present moment. There were various 
points of resemblance between them. Mr. 
Vincent, too, wore an Anglican coat, and 
assumed a high clerical aspect — sumptuary 
laws forbidding such presumption being 
clearly impracticable in England; and the 
Dissenter w'as as fully endowed with natural 
good looks as the young priest. How was 
it, then, that so vast a world of difference 
and separation lay between them ? For one 
compensating moment Mr. Vincent decided 
that it was because of his more enlightened 
faith, and felt himself persecuted. But even 
that pretence did not serve the purpose. 
He began to divine faintly, and with a cer- 
tain soreness, that, external circumstances 
do stand for something, if not in the great 
realities of a man’s career, at least in the 
comforts of his life. A poor widow’s son, ed- 
ucated at Homerton, and an English squire’s 
son, public school and university bred, can- 
not begin on the same level. To compensate 
that disadvantage requires something more 
than a talent for preaching. Perhaps genius 
would scarcely do it without the aid of time 
and labor. The conviction fell sadly upon 
poor Arthur Vincent as he went down the 
principal street of Carlingford in the October 
sunshine. He was rapidly becoming disen- 
chanted, and neither the Nonconformist nor 
the Patriot, nor Exeter Hall itself, could set 
him up again.* 

With these feelings the young pastor jUir- 
sued his way to see the poor woman who, 


SALEM CHAPEL. IQO 


according to Mrs. Brown’s account, was so 
anxious to see the minister. He found this 
person, whose desire was at present shared 
by most of the female members of Salem 
without the intervention of the Devonshire 
Dairy, in a mean little house in the close 
lane dignified by the name of Back Grove 
Street. She was a thin, dark, vivacious-look- 
ing woman, with a face from which some 
forty years of energetic living had withdrawn 
all the color and fulness which might once 
have rendered it agreeable, but which was, 
nevertheless, a remarkable face, not to be 
lightly passed oyer. Extreme thinness of 
outline and sharpness of line made the con- 
trast between this educated countenance and 
the faces which had lately surrounded the 
young minister still more remarkable. It 
•was not a profound or elevated kind of edu- 
cation, perhaps, but it was very different 
from the thin superficial lacker with which 
Miss Phoebe was coated. Eager dark eyes, 
with ^lark lines under them— thin eloquent 
lips, the upper jaw projecting slightly, the 
mouth closing fast and firm — a well-shaped 
small head, with a light black lace handker- 
chief fastened under the chin — no complex- 
ion or softening of tint— a dark, sallow, col- 
orless face, thrilling with expression, energy, 
and thought, was that on which the young 
man suddenly lighted as he went in some- 
•what indifferent, it must be confessed, and 
expecting to find nothing that could interest 
him. She was seated in a shabby room, 
only half carpeted, up two pair of stairs, 
which looked out upon no more lively view 
than the back of Salem Chapel itself, with 
its few dismal scattered graves — and was 
working busily at men’s clothing of the 
coarsest kind, blue stuff which had trans- 
ferred its color to her thin fingers. Meagre 
as were her surroundings, however, Mr. Vin- 
cent, stumbling listlessly up the narrow bare 
stair of the poor lodging-house, suddenly 
came to himself as he stood within this 
humble apartment. K this was to be his 
penitent, the story she had to tell might be 
not unworthy of serious listening. He stam- 
mered forth a half apology and explanation 
of his errand, as he gazed surprised at so 
unexpected a figure, wondering within him- 
self what intense strain and wear of life 
could have worn to so thin a tissue the outer 
garment of this keen and sharp-edged soul. 

“ Come in,” said the stranger, “lam glad 


to see you. I know you, Mr. Vincent, though 
I can’t suppose you’ve observed me. Take 
a seat. I have heard you preach ever since 
you came — so, knowing in a manner how 
your thoughts' run, I’ve a kind of acquaint- 
ance with you : which, to be sure, isn’t the 
same on your side. I dare say the woman at 
the Dairy sent you to me ? ” 

“ I understood — from Mrs. Brown cer- 
tainly — that you wanted to see me,” said 
the puzzled pastor. 

“ Yes, it was quite true. I have resources 
in myself, to be sure, as much as most peo- 
ple,” said his new acquaintance, whom he 
had been directed to ask for as Mrs. Hilyard, 
“but still human relations are necessary; 
and as I don’t know anybody here, I thought 
I’d join the chapel. Queer set of people, 
rather, don’t you think ? ” she continued, 
glancing up from her rapid stitching to catch 
Vincent’s conscious eye ; “ they thought I 
was in spiritual distress, I suppose, and sent 
me the butterman. Lord bless us ! if I had 
been, what could he have done for me, does 
anybody imagine ? and when he didn’t suc- 
ceed, there came the Dairy person, who, I 
dare say, would have understood what I 
wanted had I been a cow. Now I can make 
out what I’m doing when I have you, Mr. 
Vincent. I know your line a little from 
your sermons. That was wonderfully clever 
on Sunday morning about confirmation. I 
belong to the Church myself by rights, and 
was confirmed, of course, at the proper time, 
like other people, but I am a person of im- 
partial mind. That was a famous downright 
blow. I liked you there.” 

“ I am glad to have your approbation,” 
said the young minister, rather stiffly ; “ but 
excuse me — I was quite in earnest in my ar- 
gument.” 

“ Yes, yes ; that was the beauty of it,” 
said his eager interlocutor, who went on 
without ever raising her eyes, intent upon 
the rough work which he could not help ob- 
serving sometimes made her scarred fingers 
bleed as it passed rapidly through them. 
“ No argument is ever worth listening to if 
it isn’t used in earnest. I’ve led a wander- 
ing life, and heard an infinity of sermons of 
late years. When there are any brains in 
them at all, you know, they are about the 
only kind of mental stimulant a poor woman 
in my position can come by, for I’ve no 
time for reading lately. Down .here, in 


110 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


these regions, where the butterman comes to 
inquire after your spiritual interests, and is 
a superior being,” added this singular new 
adherent of Salem, looking full for a single 
moment in her visitor’s eyes, with a slight 
movement of the muscles of her thin face, 
and making a significant pause, “ the air’s a 
trifle heavy. It isn’t pure oxygen we breathe 
in Back Grove Street, by any means.” 

“ I assure you it surprises me more than 
I can explain to find,” said Vincent, hesitat- 
ing for a proper expression, “ to find ” 

“ Such a person as I am in Back Grove 
Street,” interrupted his companion, quickly 
— “ yes — and thereby hangs a tale. But I 
did not send for you to tell it. I sent for 
you for no particular reason, but a kind of 
yearning to talk to somebody. I beg your 
pardon sincerely — but you know,” she said, 
once more with a direct sudden glance and 
that half visible movement in her face which 
meant mischief, “ you are a minister, and 
are bound to have no inclinations of your 
own, feut to give yourself up to the comfort 
of’the poor.” 

“Without any irony, that is the aim I 
propose to myself,” said Vincent, “ but I 
fear you are disposed to take rather a satiri- 
cal view of such matters. It is fashionable 
to talk lightly on those subjects j but I find 
life and its affairs sufficiently serious, I as- 
sure you ” 

Here she stopped her work suddenly, and 
looked up at him, her dark sharp eyes light- 
ing up her thin sallow face with an ex- 
pression which it W'as beyond his power to 
fathom. The black eyelashes widened, the 
dark eyebrows rose, with a full gaze of the 
profoundest tragic sadness, on the surface of 
which a certain gleam of amusement seemed 
to hover. The worn w^oman looked over the 
dark world of her own experience, of wdiich 
she was conscious in every nerve, but of which 
he knew nothing, and smiled at his youth 
out of the abysses of her own life, where 
volcanoes had been, and earthquakes. He 
perceived it dimly, without understanding 
now, and faltered and blushed, yet grew 
angry with all the self-assertion of youth. 

“ I don’t doubt you know that as well as I 
do — perhaps better ; but notwithstanding, I 
find my life leaves little room for laughter,” 
said the young pastor, not without a slight 
touch of heroics. 

“ Mr. Vincent,” said Mrs. Hilyard, with a 


gleam of mirth in her eye, “ in inferring that 
I perhaps know better, you infer also that I 
am older than you, which is uncivil to a lady. 
But for my part, I don’t object to laughter. 
Generally it’s better than crying, which in a 
great many cases I find the only alternative. 
I doubt, however, much whether life, from 
the butterman’s point of view, wears the 
same aspect. I should be inclined to say 
not ; and I dare say your views will brighten 
with your company,” added the aggravating 
woman, again resuming, with eyes fixed 
upon it, her laborious work. 

“ I perceive you see already what is likely 
to be my great trial in Carlingford,” said 
young Vincent. “ I confess that the society 
of my office-bearers, which I suppose I must 
always consider myself bound to ” 

“ That was a very sad sigh,” said the rapid 
observer beside him ; “ but don’t confide in 
me, lest I should be tempted to tell some- 
body. I can speak my mind -without preju- 
dice to anybody ; and if you agree with me, 
it may be a partial relief to your feelings. 
I shall be glad to see you when you can spare 
me half an hour. I can’t look at you while I 
talk, for that would lose me so much time, 
but at my age it doesn’t matter. Come and 
see me. It’s your business to do me good 
— and it’s possible I might even do some 
good to you.” 

“ Thank you. I shall certainly come,” 
said the minister, rising with the feeling 
that he had received his dismissal for to-day. 
She rose too, quickly, and but for a moment, 
and held out her hand to him. 

“Be sure you don’t betray to the dairy- 
woman what I had on my mind, and wanted 
to tell you, though she is dying to know,” 
said his singular new 'acquaintance, without 
a smile, but with again a momentary move- 
ment in her thin cheeks. When she had 
shaken hands with him, she seated herself 
again immediately, and without a moment’s 
pause proceeded with her W’ork, apparently 
concentrating all her faculties upon it, and 
neither hearing nor seeing more of her vis- 
itor, though he still stood within two steps 
of her, overshadowing the table. The young 
man turned and left the room with involun- 
tary quietness, as if he had been dismissed 
from the presence of a princess. He -went 
straight down-stairs without ever pausing, 
and hastened through the narrow back-street 
with still the impulse communicated by that 


SALEM CHAPEL. HI 


dismissal upon him. When he drew breath, 
it was with a curious mixture of feelings. 
Who she was or what she was — ^how she came 
there, working at those “ slops ” till the 
color came off upon her hands, and her poor 
thin fingers bled — she so strangely superior 
to her surroundings, yet not despising or 
quarrelling with them, or even complaining 
of them, so far as he could make out — in- 
finitely perplexed the inexperienced minis- 
ter. He came away excited and bewildered 
from the interview, which had turned out so 
different from his expectations. Whether 
she had done him good, was extremely 
doubtful ; but she had changed the current 
of his thoughts, which was in its way an im- 
mediate benefit. Marvelling over such a 
mysterious apparition, and not so sure as in 
the morning that nothing out of the most 
vulgar routine ever could occur in Carling- 
ford, Mr. Vincent turned with meditative 
steps towards the little house at the extreme 
end of Grove Street, where his predecessor 
still lingered. A visit to old Mr. Tufton was 
a periodical once-a-week duty, to be per- 
formed with the utmost regularity. Tozer 
and Pigeon had agreed that it would be the 
making of the young minister to draw thus 
from the experience of the old one. Whether 
Mr. Vincent agreed with them, may be ap- 
prehended from the scene which follows. 

• CHAPTER III. 

Mr. Tufton’s house was at the extremity 
of Grove Street — at the extremity, conse- 
quently, in that direction, of Carlingford, 
lying parallel with the end of Grange Lane, 
and within distant view of St. Koque’s. It 
was a little old-fashioned house, with a small 
garden in front and a large garden behind 
it, in which the family cabbages, much less 
prosperous since the old minister became 
unable to tend them, flourished. The room 
into which Mr. Vincent, as an intimate of 
the house, was shown, was a low parlor with 
two small windows, overshadowed outside 
by ivy, and inside by two large geraniums, 
expanded upon a Jacob’s ladder of props, 
which were the pride of Mrs. Tufton’s heart, 
and made it almost impossible to see any- 
thing clearly within, even at the height of 
day. Some prints, of which one represented 
Mr. Tufton himself, and the rest other min- 
isters of “the connection,” in mahogany 
frames, hung upon the green walls. The 


furniture, though it was not unduly abun- 
dant, filled up the tiny apartment, so that 
quite a dislocation and re-arrangement of 
everything was necessary before a chair 
could be got for the visitor, and he got into 
it. Though it was rather warm for October 
out of doors, a fire, large for the size of the 
room, was burning in the fireplace, on either 
side of which was an easy-chair and an in- 
valid. The one fronting the light, and con- 
sequently fronting the visitor, was Adelaide 
Tufton, the old minister’s daughter, who 
had been confined to that chair longer than 
Phoebe Tozer could remember; and who, 
during that long seclusion, had knitted, as 
all Salem Chapel believed, without inter- 
mission, nobody having ever yet succeeded 
in discovering where the mysterious results 
of her labor went to. She was knitting 
now, reclining back in the cushioned chair 
which had been made for her, and was her 
shell and habitation. A very pale, emaci- 
ated, eager-looking woman, not much above 
thirty, but looking, after half a lifetime spent 
in that chair, any age that imagination might 
suggest; a creature altogether separated 
from the world — separated from life, it would 
be more proper to say — for nobody more in- 
terested in the world and other people’s 
share of it than Adelaide Tufton existed in 
Carlingford. She had light-blue eyes, rather 
prominent, which lightened without giving 
much expression to her perfectly colorless 
face. Her very hair was pale, and lay in 
braids of a clayey yellow, too listless and 
dull to be called brown, upon the thin tem- 
ples, over which the thin white skin seemed 
to be strained like an over-tight bandage. 
Somehow, however, people who were used 
to seeing her, were not so sorry as they 
might have been for Adelaide Tufton. No 
one could exactly say why ; but she some- 
how appeared, in the opinion of Salem 
Chapel, to indemnify herself for her priva- 
tions, and was treated, if without much sym- 
pathy, at least without that ostentatious pity 
which is so galling to the helpless. Few 
people could afi'ord to be sorry for so quick- 
sighted and all-remenabcring an observer ; 
and the consequence was, that Adelaide, al- 
most without knowing it, had managed to 
neutralize her own disabilities, and to be ac- 
knowledged as an equal in the general con- 
flict, which she could enter only with her 
sharp tongue and her quick eye. 


112 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


It was Mr. Tufton himself who sat oppo- 
site — his large expanse of face, with the 
white hair which had been apostrophized as 
venerable at so many Salem tea-parties, and 
wdiich Vincent himself had offered homage 
to, looming dimly through the green shade 
of the geraniums, as he sat with his back 
to the window. He had a green shade over 
his eyes besides, and his head moved with a 
slight palsied tremor,* which was now the 
only remnant of that “ visitation ” which had 
saved his feelings, and dismissed more be- 
nignly than Tozer and his brother deacons 
the old pastor from his old pulpit. He sat 
very contentedly doing nothing, with his 
large feet in large loose slippers, and his 
elbows supported on the arms of his chair. 
By the evidence of Mrs. Tufton’s spectacles, 
and the newspaper lying on the table, it vras 
apparent that she had been reading the Car- 
lingford Gazette to her helpless companions ; 
and that humble journal, which young Vin- 
cent had kicked to the other end of his room 
before coming out, had made the morning 
pass very pleasantly to the three secluded 
inmates of Siloam Cottage, w^hich was the 
name of the old minister’s humble home. 
Mr. Tufton said “ ’umble ’ome,” and so did 
his wife. They came from storied Islington, 
both of them, and were of highly respectable 
connections, not to say that Mrs. Tufton had 
a little property as well ; and, acting in laud- 
able opposition to the general practice of 
l^oor ministers’ wives, had brought many 
dividends and few children to the limited 
but comfortable fireside. Mr. Vincent could 
not deny that it was comfortable in its way, 
and quite satisfied its owners, as he sat down 
in the shade of the geraniums in front of the 
fire, between Adelaide Tufton and her father ; 
but, oh, heavens ! to think of such a home as 
all that, after Homerton and high Noncon- 
formist hopes, could come to himself! The 
idea, however, was one which did not occur 
to the young minister. He sat down com- 
passionately, seeing no analogy whatever 
between his own position and theirs ; scarcely 
even seeing the superficial contrast, which 
might have struck anybody, between his 
active youth and their helplessness and suf- 
fering. He was neither, hard-hearted nor 
unsympathetic, but somehow the easy moral 
of that contrast never occurred to him. Ade- 
laide Tufton’s bloodless countenance con- 
veyed an idea of age to Arthur Vincent ; 


her father was really old. The young man 
saw no grounds on which to form any com- 
parison. It was natural enough for the old 
man and ailing woman to be as they w*ere, 
just as it was natural for him, in the height 
of his early manhood, to rejoice in his 
strength and youth. 

“So there was a party at Mr. Tozer’s last 
night — and you were there, Mr. Vincent,” 
said old Mrs. Tufton, a cheerful active old 
lady with pink ribbons in her cap, which as- 
serted their superiority over the doubtful 
light and the green shade of the geraniums. 

“ Who did you have ? The Browns and the 
Pigeons, and — everybody else, of course. 
Now tell me, did Mrs. Tozer make tea her- 
self, or did she leave it to Phoebe ? ” 

“ As well as I can remember, she did it her- . 
self,” said the young pastor. 

“ Exactly what I told you, mamma,” said 
Adelaide, from her chair. “ Mrs. Tozer doesn’t 
mean Phoebe to make tea this many a year. 

I dare say she wants her to marry somebody, 
the little flirting thing. I suppose she wore 
her pink, Mr. Vincent — and Mrs. Brown 
that dreadful red-and-green silk of hers ; 
and didn’t they send you over a shape of 
jolly this morning ? Ha, ha ! I told you so, 
mamma ; that was why it never came to 
me.” 

“ Pray let me send it to you,” cried Vin- 
cent, eagerly. 

The ofier was not rejected, though co- 
quetted with for a few minutes. Then Mr. 
Tufton broke in, in solemn bass. 

“ Adelaide, we shouldn’t talk, my dear, of 
pinks and green silks. Providence has laid 
you aside, my love, from temptations ; and 
you remember how often I used to say in early 
days, ‘ No doubt it was a blessing, Jemima, 
coming when it did, to wean our girl from 
the world ; she might have been as fond of 
dress as other girls, and brought us to ruin, 
but for her misfortune. Everything is for 
the best.’ ” 

“ Oh, bother ! ” said Adelaide, sharply — 

“ I don’t complain, and never did ; but every- 
body else finds my misfortune, as they call 
it, very easy to be borne, Mr. Vincent — even 
papa, you see. There is a reason for every- 
tlfing, to be sure, but how things that are 
hard and disagreeable arc always to be called 
for the best, I can’t conceive. However, let 
us return to Phoebe Tozer’s pink dress. 
Weren’t you rather stunned with all their 


SALEM CHAPEL. 113 


gi’andeur ? You did not think we could do 
as much in Salem, did you ? Now tell me, 
who has Mrs. Brown taken in hand to do 
good to now ? I am sure she sent you to 
somebody ; and you’ve been to see some- 
body this morning,” added the quick-witted 
invalid, “ who has turned out different from 
your expectations. Tell me all about it, 
please.” 

“ Dear Adelaide does love to hear what’s 
going on. It is almost the only pleasure she 
has— and we oughtn’t to grudge it, ought 
we ? ” said Adelaide’s mother. 

“ Stuff! ” muttered Adelaide, in a perfectly 
audible aside. “ Now I think of it. I’ll tell 
you who .you’ve been to see. That woman 
in Back Grove Street — there? What do 
you think of that for a production of Salem, 
Mr. Vincent ? But she does not really be- 
long to Carlingford. She married somebody 
who turned out badly, and now she’s in hid- 
ing that he mayn’t find her; though most 
likely, if all be true, he does not want to 
find her. That’s her history. I never pre- 
tend to tell more than I know. Who she 
was to begin with, or who he is, or whether 
Hilyard may be her real name, or why she 
lives there and comes to Salem Chapel, I 
can’t tell ; but that’s the bones of her story, 
you know. If I were a clever romancer like 
some people, I could have made it all perfect 
for you, but I ^prefer the truth. Clever and 
queer, isn’t she ? So I have guessed by 
what people say.” 

“ Indeed, you seem to know a great deal 
more about her than I do,” said the aston- 
ished pastor. 

“ I dare say,” assented Adelaide, calmly. 
“ I have never seen her, however, though I 
can form an idea of what she must be like, 
all the same. I put things together, you see ; 
and it is astonishing the number of scraps of 
news I get. I shake them well down, and 
then the broken pieces come together ; and 
I never forget anything, Mr. Vincent,” she 
continued, pausing for a moment to give him 
a distinct look out of the pale-blue eyes, 
which for the moment seemed to take a vin- 
dictive feline gleam. “ She’s rather above 
the Browns and the Tozers, you understand. 
Somehow or other, she’s mixed up with Lady 
Western, whom they call the Young Dowa- 
ger, you know. I have not made that out 
yet, though I partly guess. My lady goes to 
see her up two pairs of stairs in Back Grove 

CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


Street. I hope it does her ladyship good to 
see how the rest of the world manage to live 
and get on.” 

“ I am afraid, Adelaide, my dear,” said 
Mr. Tufton, in his bass tones, “that my 
young brother will not think this very im- 
proving conversation. Dear Tozer was speak- 
ing to me yesterday about the sermon to the 
children. I always preached them a sermon 
to themselves about this time of the year. 
My plan has been to take the congregation 
in classes ; the young men — ah, and they’re 
specially important, are the young men. 
Dear Tozer suggested that some popular 
lectures now would not come amiss. After 
a long pastorate like mine,” said the good 
man, blandly, unconscious that dear Tozer 
had already begun to suggest a severan«e of 
that tie before gentle sickness did it for him, 
“ a congregation may be supposed to be a 
little unsettled, — without any offence to you, 
my dear brother. If I could appear myself 
and show my respect to your ministry, it 
would have a good effect, no doubt ; but I 
am laid aside, laid aside. Brother Vincent 1 
I can only help you with my prayers.” 

“But dear, dear Mr. Tufton!” cried his 
wife, “ bless you, the chapel is twice as full 
as it was six months ago — and natural too, 
with a nice young man.” 

“ My dear ! ” said the old minister in re- 
proof. “Yes quite natural — curiosity about 
a stranger; but my young brother must 
not be elated ; nor discouraged when they 
drop off. A young pastor’s start in life is 
attended by many trials. There is always a 
little excitement at first, and an appearance 
of seats letting, and the ladies very polite to 
you. Take it easily, my dear Brother ! Don’t 
expect too much. In a year or two — by and 
by, when things settle down — ^then you can 
see how it’s going to be.” 

“But don’t you think it possible that 
things may never settle down, but continue 
rising up instead P ” said Mr. Vincent, mak- 
ing a little venture in the inspiration of the 
moment. 

Mr. Tufton shook his head and raised his 
large hands slowly, with a deprecating re- 
gretful motion, to hold them over the fire. 
“ Alas ! he’s got the fever already,” said the 
old minister. “ My dear young brother, you 
shall have my experience to refer to always. 
You’re always welcome to my advice. Dear 
Tozer said to me just yesterday, ‘ You point 
8 


114 CHRONICLE S OF CARLINGFORD. 


out the pitfalls to him, Mr. Tufton, and give 
him your advice, and I’ll take care that he 
sha’n’t go wrong outside,’ says dear Tozer. 
Ah, an invaluable man ! ” 

“ But a little disposed to interfere, I 
think,” said Vincent, with an irrestrainable 
inclination to show his profound disrelish of 
all the advice which was about to be given 
him. 

Mr. Tufton raised his heavy forefinger 
and shook it slowly. “ No — no. Be care- 
ful, my dear brother. You must keep well 
with your deacons. You must not take up 
prejudices against them. Dear Tozer is a 
man of a thousand — a man of a thousand ! 
Dear Tozer, if you listen to him, will keep 
you out of trouble. The trouble he takes 
and the money he spends for Salem Chapel 
is, mark my words, unknown — and,” added 
the old pastor, awfully syllabling the long 
word in his solemn bass, “ in-con-ceiv- 
able.” 

“ He is a bore and an ass for all that,” 
said the daring invalid opposite, with perfect 
equanimity, as if uttering the most patent 
and apparent of truths. “ Don’t you give in 
to him, Mr. Vincent. A pretty business you 
will have with them all,” she continued, 
dropping her knitting-needles and lifting her 
pale-blue eyes, with their sudden green 
gleam, to the face of the new comer with a 
rapid perception of his character, which, 
having no sympathy in it, but rather a cer- 
tain mischievous and pleased satisfaction in 
his probable discomfiture, gave anything 
but comfort to the object of her’observation. 
“ You are something new for them to pet 
and badger. I wonder how long they’ll be 
of killing Mr. Vincent. Papa’s tough ; but 
you remember, mamma, they finished off 
the other man before us in two years.” 

“ Oh, hush, Adelaide, hush ! you’ll frighten 
Mr. Vincent,” cried the kind little mother, 
with uneasy looks : “ when he comes to see 
us and cheer us up — as I am sure is very 
kind of him — it is a shame to put all sorts 
of things in his head, as papa and you do. 
Never mind Adelaide, Mr. Vincent, dear. 
Do your duty, and never fear anybody ; 
that’s always been my maxim, and I’ve 
always found it answer. Not going away, 
are you ? Dear, dear ! and we’ve had no wise 
talk at all, and never once asked for your 
poor dear mother — quite well, I hope ? — and 
Miss Susan ? You should have them come 


and see you, and cheer you up. Well, good- 
morning, if you must go ; don’t be long be- 
fore you come again.” 

“ And my dear young brother, don’t take 
up any prejudices,” interposed Mr. Tufton, in 
tremulous bass, as he pressed Vincent’s half- 
reluctant fingers in that large, soft, flabby 
ministerial hand. Adelaide added nothing 
to these valedictions ; but when she too had 
received his leave-taking, and he had emerged 
from the shadow of geraniums, the observer 
paused once more in her knitting. “ This 
one will not hold out two years,” said Ade- 
laide, calmly to herself, no one else paying 
any attention ; and she returned to her work 
with the zest of a spectator at the commence- 
ment of an exciting drama. She did double 
work all the afternoon under the influence 
of this refreshing stimulant. It was quite a 
new interest in her life. 

Meanwhile young Vincent left the green 
gates of Siloam Cottage with no very com- 
fortable feelings — with feelings, indeed, the 
reverse of comfortable, yet conscious of a 
certain swell and elevation in his mind at 
the same moment. It was for him to show 
the entire community of Carlingford the dif- 
ference between his reign and the old regime. 
It was for him to change the face of affairs 
— to reduce Tozer into his due place of sub- 
ordination, and to bring in an influx of new 
life, intelligence, and enlighteftment over the 
prostrate butterman. The very sordidness 
and contraction of the little world into which 
he had just received so distinct a view, pro- 
moted the revulsion of feeling which now 
cheered him. The aspiring young man 
could as soon have consented to lose hh 
individuality altogether as to acknowledge 
the most distant possibility of accepting 
Tozer as his guide, philosopher, and friend. 
He went back again through Grove Street, 
heated and hastened on his way by those 
impatient thoughts. When he came as far 
as Salem, he could not but pause to look at 
it with its pinched gable and mean little bel- 
fry, innocent of a bell. The day was over- 
clouded, and no clearness of atmosphere 
relieved the aspect of the shabby chapel, 
with its black railing, and locked gates, and 
dank flowerlcss grass inside. To see any- 
thing venerable or sacred in the aspect of 
such a place, required an amount of illusion 
and glamour which the young minister could 
not summon into his eyes. It was not the 


SALEM CHAPEL. — 115 


centre of light in a dark place, the simple 
tribune from which the people’s preacher 
should proclaim, to the awe and conviction 
of the multitude, that Gospel once preached 
to the p oor, of which he flattered himself he 
should be the truest messenger in Carling- 
ford. Such had been the young man’s dreams 
in Homerton — dreams mingled, it is true, 
with personal ambition, but full notwith- 
standing of generous enthusiasm. No — 
nothing of the kind. Only Salem Chapel, 
with so many pews let, and so many still to 
be disposed of, and Tozer a guardian angel 
at the door. Mr. Vincent was so far left to 
himself as to give vent to an impatient ex- 
clamation as he turned away. But still mat- 
ters were not hopeless. He himself was a 
very different man from Mr. Tufton. Kin- 
dred spirits there must surely be in Carling- 
ford to answer to the call of his. Another 
day might dawn for the Nonconformists, 
who were not aware of their own dignity. 
With this thought he retraced his steps a 
little, and, with an impulse which he did not 
explain to himself, threaded his way up a 
narrow lane and emerged into Back Grove 
}) Street, about the spot where he had lately 
paid his pastoral visit, and made so unex- 
pected an acquaintance. This woman — or 
should he not say lady ? — was a kind of first- 
fi'uits of his mission. The young man looked 
up with a certain wistful interest at the 
house in which she lived. She was neither 
young nor fair, it is true, but she interested 
the youthful Nonconformist, who was not 
too old for impulses of chivalry, and who 
could not forget her poor Angers scarred 
with her rough work. He had no other 
motive for passing the house but that of 
sympathy and compassion for the forlorn 
brave creature who was so unlike her sur- 
roundings ; and no throbbing pulse or trem- 
bling nerve forewarned Arthur Vincent of 
the approach of fate. 

At that moment, however, fate was ap- 
proaching in the shape of a handsome car- 
riage, which made quite an exaggeration of 
echo in this narrow back-street which rang 
back every jingle of the harness and dint of 
the hoofs from every court and opening. It 
drew up before Mrs. Hilyard’s door — at the 
door of the house, at least, in which Mrs. 
Hilyard was an humble lodger ; and while 
Vincent slowly approached, a brilliant vision 
suddenly appeared before him, rustling forth 


upon the crowded pavement, where the dirty 
children stood still to gape at her. A woman 
— a lady — a beautiful dazzling creature, re- 
splendent in the sweetest English roses, the 
most delicate bewildering bloom. Though 
it was but for a moment, the bewildered 
young minister had time to note the dainty 
foot, the daintier hand, the smiling sunshiny 
eyes, the air of conscious supremacy, which 
was half command and half entreaty — an in- 
effable combination. That vision descended 
out of the heavenly chariot upon the mean 
pavement just as Mr. Vincent came up ; 
and at the same moment a ragged boy, 
struck speechless, like the young minister, 
by the apparition, planted himself full in her 
way with open mouth and staring eyes, too 
much overpowered by sudden admiration to 
perceive that he stopped the path. Scarcely 
aware what he was doing, as much beauty- 
struck as his victim, Vincent, with a certain 
unconscious fury, seized the boy by the col- 
lar, and swung him impatiently off the pave- 
ment, with a feeling of positive resentment 
against the imp, whose rags were actually ^ 
touching those sacred splendid draperies. 
The lady made a momentary pause, turned 
half round, smiled with a gracious inclina- 
tion of her head, and entered at the open 
door, leaving the young pastor in an incom- 
prehensible ecstasy, with his hat off, and all 
his pulses beating loud in his ears, riveted, 
as the romancers say, to the pavement. 
When the door shut he came to himself, 
stared wildly into the face of the next pas- 
senger who came along the naiTow street, 
and then, becoming aware that he still stood 
uncovered, grew violently red, put on his hat, 
and went off at a great pace. But what was 
the use of going off? The deed was done. 
The world on the other side of these pranc- 
ing horses was a different world from that 
on this side. Those other matters, of which 
he had been thinking so hotly, had suddenly 
faded into a background and accessories to 
the one triumphant figure which occupied all 
the scene. He scarcely asked himself who 
was that beautiful vision ? The fact of her 
existence was at the moment too overpow- 
ering for any secondary inquiries. He had 
seen her — and lo ! the universe was changed. 
The air tingled softly with the sound of 
prancing horses and rolling wheels, the air 
breathed an irresistible soft perfume, which 
could nevermore die out of it, the air rus- 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


116 

tied -with the silken thrill of those womanly 
robes. There she had enthroned herself— 
not in his startled heart, but in the palpitat- 
ing world, which formed in a moment’s time 
into one great background and framework 
for that beatific form. 

What the poor young man had done to be 
suddenly assailed and carried oflF his feet by 
this wonderful and unexpected apparition, 
we are unable to say. He seemed to have 
done nothing to provoke it : approaching 
quietly as any man might do, pondering 
grave thoughts of Salem Chapel, and how 
he was to make his post tenable, to be trans- 
fixed all at once and unawares by that fairy 
lance, was a spite of fortune which nobody 
could have predicted. But the thing was 
done. He went home to hide his stricken 
head, as was natural ; tried to read, tried to 


think of a popular series of lectures, tried to 
lay plans for his campaign and heroic desper- 
ate attempts to resuscitate the shopkeeping 
Dissenterism of Carlingford into a lofty Non- 
conformist ideal. But vain were the efibrts. 
Wherever he lifted his eyes, was not She 
there, all-conquering and glorious ? when he 
did not lift his eyes, was not she everywhere 
Lady Paramount of the conscious world? 
Womankind in general, which had never, so 
to speak, entered his thoughts before, had 
produced much trouble to poor Arthur Vin- 
cent since his arrival in Carlingford. But 
Phoebe Tozer, pink and blooming; Mrs. 
Hilyard, sharp and strange : Adelaide 
Tufton, pale spectator of a life with which 
she had nothing to do, died off like shadows, 
and left no sign of their presence. , Who 
was She ? 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


PART n. — CHAPTER IV. 

After the remarkable encounter which 
had thus happened to the young minister, 
life went on with him in the dullest routine 
for some days. Thursday came, and he had 
to go to Mrs. Brown’s tea-party, where in 
the drawing-room up-stairs, over the Dev- 
onshire Dairy, after tea, and music, and the 
diversions of the evening, he conducted 
prayers to the great secret satisfaction of 
the hostess, who felt that the superior piety 
of her entertainment entirely made up for 
any little advantage in point of gentility 
which Mrs. Tozer, with a grown-up daughter 
fresh from a boarding-school, might have 
over her. On Friday evening there was the 
||: ;;singing-ciass at the chapel, which Mr. Vin- 
A , cent was expected to look in upon, and from 
fg which he had the privilege of walking home 
with Miss Tozer. When he arrived with his 
blooming charge at the private door, the ex- 
istence of which he had not hitherto been 
aware of, Tozer himself appeared to invite 
the young pastor to enter. This time it was 
the butterman’s unadorned domestic hearth 
to which Mr. Vincent was introduced. This 
happy privacy was in a little parlor, which, 
being on the same floor with the butter- 
shop, naturally was not without a reminis- 
cence of the near vicinity of all those hams 
! and cheeses — a room nearly blocked up by 
the large family-table, at which, to the dis- 
gust of Phoebe, the apprentices sat at meal- 
times along with the family. One little boy, 
distinguished out of doors by a red worsted 
: • comforter, was, besides Phoebe, the only mem- 
5 her of the family itself now at home j the oth- 

ers being two sons, one in Australia, and the 
I other studying for a minister, as Mrs. Tozer 
had already informed her pastor, with moth- 
erly pride. Mrs. Tozer sat in an easy-chair 
by the fire darning stockings on this October 
night; her husband, opposite to her, had 
been looking over his greasy books, one 
of which lay open upon a little writing- 
desk, where a bundle of smaller ones in 
red leather, with “ Tozer, cheesemonger,” 
stamped on them in gilt letters, lay waiting 
Phoebe’s arrival to be made up. The Ben- 
jamin of the house sat half-w^ay down the 
long table with his slate working at his les- 
sons. The margin of space round this long 
table scarcely counted in the aspect of the 
room. There was space enough for chairs 
to be set round it, and that was all : the 


117 

table, with its red-and-blue cover and the 
faces appearing about it, constituted the en- 
tire scene. Mr. Vincent stood uneasily at a 
corner when he was brought into the apart- 
ment, and distinctly placed himself at table, 
as if at a meal, when he sat down, 

“ Do you now take off your great-coat, 
and maktf yourself comfortable,” said Mrs. 
Tozer; “there’s a bit of supper coming 
presently. This is just what I like, is this. 
A party is very well in its way, Mr. Vincent, 
sir ; but when a gen’leman comes in famil- 
iar, and takes us just as we are, that’s what 
I like. We never can be took wrong of an 
evening, Tozer and me ; there’s always a bit 
of something comfortable for supper ; and 
after the shop’s shut in them long evenings, 
time’s free. Phoebe, make haste and take 
off your things. What a color you’ve got, 
to be sure, with the night air ! I declare, 
pa, somebody must have been saying some- 
thing to her, or she’d never look so bright.” 

“I dare say there’s more things than music 
gets talked of at the singing,” said Tozer, 
thus appealed to. “ But she’d do a deal 
better if she’d try to improve her mind than 
take notice what the young fellows says.” 

“ O pa, the idea ! and before Mr. Vin- 
cent too,” cried Phoebe — “ to think I should 
ever dream of listening to anything that 
anybody might choose to say ! ” 

Vincent, to whom the eyes of the whole 
family turned, grinned a feeble smile, but, 
groaning in his mind, was totally unequal to 
the effort of saying anything. After a mo- 
ment’s pause of half-disappointfed expecta- 
tion, Phoebe disappeared to take off her bon- 
net ; and Mrs. Tozer, bestirring herself, 
cleared away the desk and books, and went 
into the kitchen to inquire into the supper. 
The minister and the deacon were accord- 
ingly left alone. 

“ Three more pews applied for this week 
—fifteen sittings in all,” said Mr. Tozer; 
“ that’s what I call satisfactory, that is. 
We mustn’t let the steam go down— not on 
no account. You keep well at them of Sun- 
days, Mr. Vincent, and trust to the man- 
agers, sir, to keep ’em up to their dooty. 
Me and Mr. Tufton was consulting the other 
day. He says as we oughtn’t to spare you, 
and you oughtn’t to spare yourself. There 
hasn’t been such a opening not in our con- 
nection for fifteen year. W e all look to you 
to go into it, Mr. Vincent. If all goes as I 


118 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


expect, and you keep up as you’re doing, I 
see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to 
put another fifty to the salary next year.” 

“ Oh ! ” said poor Vincent, with a misera- 
ble face. He had been rather pleased to 
hear about the “ opening,” but this matter- 
of-fact encouragement and stimulus threw 
him back into dismay and disgust. 

“ Yes,” said the deacon, “ though I 
wouldn’t advise you, as a young man settin’ 
out in life, to calculate upon it, yet we all 
think it’s more than likely ; but if you was to 
ask my advice, I’d say to give it ’em a little 
more plain — meaning the Church folks. It’s 
expected of a new man. I’d touch ’em up 
in the State Church line, Mr. Vincent, if I 
was you. Give us a coorse upon the anom- 
alies, and that sort of thing — the bishops in 
their palaces, and the fishermen as was the 
start of it all ; there’s a deal to be done in 
that way. It always tells ; and my opinion 
is as you might secure the most part of the 
young men and thinkers, and them as can 
see what’s what, if you lay it on pretty 
strong. Not,” added the deacon, remem- 
bering in time to add that necessary salve to 
the conscience — “ not as I would have you 
neglect what’s more important; but, after 
all, what is more important, Mr. Vincent, 
than freedom of opinion and choosing your 
own religious teacher ? You can’t put Gos- 
pel truth in a man’s mind till you’ve freed 
him out of them bonds. It stands to reason 
— as long as he believes just what he’s told, 
and has it all made out for him the very 
words he’s to pray, there may be feelin’, sir, 
but there can’t be no spiritual understandin’ 
in that man.” 

“ Well, one can’t deny that there have been 
enlightened men in the Church of England,” 
said the young Nonconformist, with lofty 
candor. “The inconsistencies of the hu- 
man mind are wonderful ; and it is coming 
to be pretty clearly understood in the intel- 
lectual world, that a man may show the most 
penetrating genius, and even the widest lib- 
erality, and yet be led a willing slave in the 
bonds of religious rite and ceremony. One 
cannot understand it, it is true ; but in our 
clearer atmosphere we are bound to exercise 
Christian charity. Great as the advantages 
are on our side of the question, I would not 
willingly hurt the feelings of a sincere Church- 
man, who, for anything I know, may be the 
best of men.” 


Mr. Tozer paused with a “ humph ! ” of 
uncertainty; rather dazzled with the fine 
language, but doubtful of the sentiment. 
At length light seemed to dawn upon the 
excellent butterman. “ Bless my soul ! 
that’s a new view,” said Tozer ; “ that’s tak- 
ing the superior line over them ! My im- 
pression is as that would tell beautiful. Eh ! 
it’s famous, that is ! I’ve heard a many gen- 
tlemen attacking the Church, like, from down 
below, and giving it her about her money 
and her greatness, and all that ; but our 
clearer atmosphere — there’s the point ! I 
always knew as you was a clever young man, 
Mr. Vincent, and expected a deal from you ; 
but that’s a new view, that is ! ” 

“ 0 pa, dear ! don’t be always talking 
about chapel business,” said Miss Phoebe, 
coming in. “ I am sure Mr. Vincent is sick 
to death of Salem. I am sure his heart is 
in some other place now ; and if you bore 
him always about the chapel, he’ll never, 
nevei' take to Carlingford. O Mr. Vincent, I 
am sure you know it is quite true ! ” 

“ Indeed,” said the young minister, with 
a sudden recollection, “ I can vouch for my 
heart being in Carlingford, and nowhere 
else ; ” and as he spoke his color rose. 
Phoebe clapped her hands with a little sem- 
blance of confusion. 

“ Oh, la ! ” cried that young lady, “ that 
is quite as good as a confession that you have 
lost it, Mr. Vincent. Oh, I am so interested ! 

I wonder who it can be ! ” 

“ Hush, child ; I dare say we shall know 
before long,” said Mrs. Tozer, who had also' 
rejoined the domestic party ; “ and don’t 
you color up or look ashamed, Mr. Vincent. 
Take my word, it’s the very best a young 
minister can do. To be sure, where there’s 
a quantity of young ladies in a congregation, 
it sometimes makes a little dispeace ; but 
there aint to say many to choose from in 
Salem.” 

“ La, mamma, how caji you think it’s a 
lady in Salem ? ” cried Phoebe, in a flutter 
of consciousness. 

“ O you curious thing ! ” cried Mrs. 
Tozer : “ she’ll never rest, Mr. Vincent, till 
she’s found it all out. She always was, from 
a child, a dreadful one for finding out a se- 
cret. But don’t you trouble yonrself; it’s 
the best thing a young minister can do.” 

Poor Vincent made a hasty eflbrt to excul- 
pate himself from the soft impeachment, but 


SALEM CHAPEL. HQ 


with no effect. Smiles, innuendoes, a suc- 
cession of questions asked by Phoebe, who 
retired, whenever she had made her remark, 
with conscious looks and pink blushes, per- 
petually renewed this delightful subject. The 
unlucky young man retired upon Tozer. In 
desperation he laid himself open to the less 
troublesome infliction of the butterman’s 
advice. In the mean time the table was 
spread, and supper appeared in most sub- 
stantial and savory shape ; the only draw- 
back being, that whenever the door was 
opened, the odors of bacon and cheese from 
the shop came in like a musty shadow of the 
boiled ham and hot sausages within. 

“I am very partial to your style, Mr. 
yincent,” said the deacon ; “ there’s just 
one thing I’d like to observe, sir, if you’ll 
excuse me. I’d give ’em a coorse ; there’s 
nothing takes like a coorse in our connec- 
tion. Whether it’s on a chapter or a book 
of Scripture, or on a perticklar doctrine, I’d 
make a pint of giving ’em a coorse if it was 
me. There was Mr. Bailey, of Parson’s 
Green, as was so popular before he married 
— he had a historical coorse in the evenings, 
and a coorse upon the eighth of Homans in 
the morning ; and it was astonishing to see 
how they took. I walked over many and 
many’s the, summer evening myself, he kep’ 

4up the interest so. There aint a cleverer 
man in our body, nor wasn’t a better liked 
as he was then.” 

• “ And now I understand he’s gone away 

— what was the reason ? ” asked Mr. Vinr 
cent. 

Tozer shrugged his shoulders and shook 
his head. “ All along of the women : they 
didn’.t like his wife ; and my own opinion is, 
he fell off dreadful. Last time I heard him, 
I made up my mind I’d never go back again 

me that was such an admirer of his ; and 

the managers found the chapel was falling 
qff, and a deputation waited on him ; and, 
to be sure, he saw it his duty to go.” 

“ And oh, she was so sweetly pretty ! ” 
cried Miss Phoebe : “ but pray, pray, Mr. 
Vincent, don’t look so pale. If you marry a 
pretty Ifidj, we’ll all be so kind to her! 
We sha’n’t grudge her our minister, we 
shall ” 

Here Miss Phoebe pasued, overcome by 
her emotions. 

“ I do declare there never was such a child,” 
said Mrs. Tozer : “ it’s none of your busi- 


ness, Phoebe. She’s a great deal too feelin’, 
Mr. Vincent. But I don’t approve, for my 
part, of a minister marrying a lady as is too 
grand for her place, whatever Phoebe may 
say. It’s her that should teach suchlike as 
us humility and simple ways ; and a fine lady 
isn’t no way suitable. Not to discourage 
you, Mr. Vincent, I haven’t a doubt, for my 
part, that you’ll make a nice choice.” 

“ I have not the least intention of trying 
the experiment,” said poor Vincent, with a 
faint smile ; then, turning to his deacon, he 
plunged into the first subject that occurred 
to him. “ Do you know a Mrs. Hilyard in 
Back Grove Street ? ” asked the young min- 
ister. “I went to see her the other day. 
Who is she, or where does she belong to, 
can you tell me ? — and which of your great 
ladies in Carlingford is it,” he added, with a 
little catching of his breath after a momen- 
tary pause, “ who visits that poor lady ? j 
saw a carriage at her door.” 

“ Meaning the poor woman at the back of 
the chapel ? ” said Tozer — “ I don’t know 
nothing of her, except that I visited there, 
sir, as you might do, in the way of dooty. 
Ah 1 I fear she’s in the gall of bitterness, 
Mr. Vincent ; she didn’t take my ’umble ad- 
vice, sir, not as a Christian ought. But she 
comes to the chapel regular enough ; and 
you may be the means of putting bettor 
thoughts into her mind ; and as for our 
great ladies in Carlingford,” continued Mr. 
Tozer, with the air of an authority, “ never 
a one of them, I give you my word, would 
go out of her way a-visiting to one of the 
chapel folks. They’re a deal too bigoted for 
that, especially them at St. Roque’s.” 

“ O pa, how can you say so ? ” cried Phoebe, 
“ when it’s very well known that ladies go 
everywhere, where the people are very, very 
poor 5 but then Mr. Vincent said a poor lady. 
Was it a nice carriage ? The Miss Wode- 
houses always walk, and so does Mrs. Glen, 
and all the Strange ways. Oh, I know ! it 
was the young Dowager — that pretty, pretty 
lady, you know, mamma, that gives the grand 
parties, and lives in Grange Lane. I saw 
her carriage going up the lane by the chapel 
once. 0 Mr. Vincent, wasn’t she very, very 
pretty, with blue eyes and brown hair ? ” 

“ 1 could not tell you what kind of eyes 
and hair they were,” said Mr. Vincent, try- 
ing hard to speak indifferently, and quite 
succeeding so far as Phoebe Tozer Tv^as con- 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


120 

cern^d ; for who could venture to associate 
the minister of Salem, even as a victim, with 
the bright eyes of Lady W estern ? I thought 
it strange to see her there, whoever she 
was.” 

“ Oh, how insensible you are ! ” mur- 
mured Phoebe, across the table. Perhaps, 
considering all things, it was not strange 
that Phoebe should imagine her own pink 
bloom to have dimmed the young pastor’s 
appreciation of other beauty. 

“But it was Mrs. Hilyard I inquired 
about, and not this Lady — Lady what. Miss 
Phoebe?” asked the reverend hypocrite ; “I 
don’t profess to be learned in titles, but hers 
is surely a strange one. I thought dowager 
was another word for an old woman.” 

“ She’s a beautiful young creature,” broke 
in the butterman. “I mayn’t approve of 
such goings-on, but I can’t shut my eyes. 
She deals with me regular, and I can tell 
you the shop looks like a different place 
when them eyes of hers are in it. She’s out 
of our line, and she’s out of your line, Mr. 
Vincent,” added Tozer, apologetically, com- 
ing down from his sudden enthusiasm, “ or 
I mightn’t say as much as I do say, for she’s 
gay, and always a giving parties, and spend- 
ing her life in company, as I don’t approve 
of ; but to look in her face, you couldn’t say 
a word against her — nor I couldn’t. She 
might lead a man out of his wits, and I 
wouldn’t not to say blame him. If the an- 
gels are nicer to look at, it’s a wonder to 
me ! ” 

Having reached to this pitch of admira- 
tion, the alarmed butterman came to a sud- 
den pause, looked round him somewhat dis- 
mayed, wiped his forehead, rubbed his hands, 
and evidently felt that he had committed 
himself, and was at the mercy of his audi- 
ence. Little did the guilty Tozer imagine 
that never before — not when giving counsel 
upon chapel business in the height of wis- 
dom, or complimenting the sermon as only 
a chapel-manager, feeling in his heart that 
the seats were letting, could — had he spoken 
so much to the purpose in young Vincent’s 
hearing, or won so much sympathy from the 
minister. As for the female part of the 
company, they were at first too much ainazed 
for speech. “ Upon my word, papa! ” burst 
from the lips of the half-laughing, half-angry 
Phoebe. Mrs. Tozer, who had been cutting 
bread with a large knife, hewed at her great 


loaf in silence, and not till that occupation 
was over divulged her sentiments. 

“Some bread, Mr. Vincent?” said at 
last that injured woman : “ that’s how it is 
with all you men. Niver a one, hawever 
you may have been brought up, nor what- 
ever pious ways you may have been used to, 
can stand out against a pretty face. Thank 
goodness, we know better. Beauty’s but 
skin deep, Mr. Vincent ; and, for my part, 
I can’t see the difference between one pair o’ 
eyes and another. I dare say I see as well 
out of mine as Lady Western does out o’ 
hers, though Tozer goes on about ’em. I^’s 
a mercy for the world, women aint carried 
away so ; and to hear a man as is the father 
of a family, and ought to set an example^ 
a talking like this in his own house ! What 
is the minister to think, Tozer ? and Phoebe^ 
a girl as is as likely to take up notions about 
her looks as most ? It’s what I didn’t ex> 
pect from you.” * 

“ La, mamma ! as if there was any like- 
ness between Lady W estern and me ! ” cried 
Phoebe, lifting a not unexpectant face across 
the table. But Mr. Vincent was not equal 
to the occasion. In that locale, and under 
these circumstances, a tolerable breadth of 
compliment would not have shocked any-' 
body’s feelings ; but the pastor neglected his 
opportunities. He sat silent, and made no 
reply to Phoebe’s look. He even at this 
moment, if truth must be told, devoted him- 
self to the well-filled plate which Mrs. Tozer’s 
hospitality had set before him. He would 
fain have made a diversion in poor Tozer’s 
favor had anything occurred to him in the 
thrill of sudden excitement which Tozer’s 
declaration had surprised him into. As it 
was, tingling with anxiety to hear more of 
that unknown enchantress, whose presence 
made sunshine even in the butterman’s shop„ 
no indifferent words would find their way to 
Vincent’s lips. So he bestowed his atten- 
tions instead upon the comfortable supper tO' 
which everybody around him, quite unex- 
cited by this little interlude, was doing full 
justice, and, not venturing to ask, listened 
with a palpitating heart. 

“You see, Mr. Vincent,” resumed Mrs. 
Tozer, “ that title of ‘ the young Dowager ’ 
has been given to Lady Western by them 
as is her chief friends in Carlingford. Such 
little things comes to our knowledge as 
they mightn’t come to other folks in our 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


121 


situation, by us serving the best families, 
There’s but two families in Grange Lane as 
don’t deal with Tozer, and one of them’s a 
new-comer as knows no better, and the 
other a stingy old bachelor, as we wouldn’t 
go across the road to get his custom. A 
well-kept house must have its butter, and 
its cheese, and its ham regular ; but when 
there’s but a man and a maid, and them 
nigh as bilious as the master, and picking 
bits of cheese as one never heard the name 
of, and as has to be sent to town for, or to 
the Italian shop, it stands to reason neither 
me nor Tozer cares for a customer like 
that.” 

“ O ma, what does Mr. Vincent care about 
the customers ? ” cried Phoebe, in despair. 

“ He might, then, before all’s done,” said 
the deaconess. “ We couldn’t be as good 
friends to the chapel, nor as serviceable, nor 
as well thought on in our connection, if it 
wasn’t for the customers. So you see, sir. 
Lady Western, she’s a young lady not a 
deal older than my Phoebe, but by reason of 
having married an old man, she has a step- 
son twice as old as herself, and he’s married ; 
and so this gay pretty creature here, she’s 
the Dowager Lady Western. I’ve seen her 
with Lady Western, her step-daugh- 

ter-in-law, and young Lady Western was a 
deal older, and more serious looking, and 
knew twenty times more of life than the 
Dowager — and you may be sure she don’t 
lose the opportunity to laugh at it neither — 
and so that’s how the name arose.” 

“Thank you for the explanation; and I 
suppose, of course, she lives in Grange 
Lane,” said the pastor, still bending with 
devotion over his plate. 

“ Dear, dear, you don’t eat nothing, Mr. 
Vincent,” cried his benevolent hostess ; 
“that comes of study, as I’m always a 
telling Tozer. A deal better, says I, to root 
the minister out, and get him to move about 
for the good of his health, than to put him 
up to sermons and coorses, when we’re all 
as pleased as Punch to start with. She 
lives in Grange Lane, to bo sure, as they 
most all do as is anything in Carlingford. 
Fashion’s all— but I like a bit of stir and 
life myself, and couldn’t a-bear them close 
walls. But it w'ould be news in Salem that 
we was spending our precious time a-talking 
over a lady like Lady Western ; and as for 
the woman at the back of the chapel, don’t 


you be led away to go to Everybody as Mrs. 
Brown sends you to, Mr. Vincent. She’s a 
good soul, but she’s always a picking up 
somebody. Tozer’s been called up at twelve 
o’clock, when we were all a-bed, to see some- 
body as was dying ; and there was no dying 
about it, but only Mrs. Brown’s way. My 
son, being at his eddication for a minister, 
makes me feel mother-like to a young pastor, 
Mr. Vincent. I’d be grateful to anybody as 
would give my boy warning when it comes 
to be his time.” 

“ I almost wonder,” said Vincent, with a 
little natural impatience, “ that you did not 
struggle on with Mr. Tufton for a little 
longer, till your son’s education was fin- 
ished.” 

Mrs. Tozer held up her head with gratified 
pride. “ He’ll be two years before he’s 
ready, and there’s never no telling what may 
happen in that time,” said the pleased 
mother, forgetting how little favorable to 
her guest was any anticipated contingency. 
The words were very innocently spoken, but 
they had their efiect upon Vincent. He 
made haste to extricate himself from the 
urgent hospitality which surrounded him. 
He was deafer than ever to Miss Phoebe’^ 
remarks, and listened with a little impa- 
tience to Tozer’s wisdom. As soon as he 
could manage it, he left them, with abun- 
dant material for his thoughts. “ There’s 
never no telling what may happen in that 
time,” rang in his ears as ho crossed George 
Street to his lodging, and the young minis- 
ter could scarcely check the disgust and ini- 
I patience which were rising in his mind. In 
i all the pride of his young intellect, to be ad- 
I vised by Tozer — to have warning stories 
! told him of that unfortunate brother in Par- 
' son’s Green, whose pretty wife made herself 
I obnoxious to the deacons’ wives — to have 
I the support afforded by the butter man to the 
i chapel thrown in his face with such an 
I undisguised claim upon his gratitude — O 
Heaven, was this what Homerton was to 
come to? Perhaps he had been brought 
' here, in all the young flush of his hopes, 

* only to have the life crushed out of him by 
i those remorseless chapel-managers, and room 
; made over his tarnished fame and mortified 
’ expectations— over his body, as the young 
man said to himself in unconscious heroics 
— for young Tozer’s triumphant entrance. 
On the whole, it was not to be supposed 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


122 

that to see himself at the mercy of such a 
limited and jealous coterie — people proud 
of their liberality to the chapel, and alto- 
gether unable to comprehend the feelings of 
a sensitive and cultivated mind — could be an 
agreeable prospect to the young man. Their 
very approbation chafed him ; and if he went 
beyond their level, or exceeded their narrow 
limit, what mercy was he to expect, what 
justice, what measure of comprehension ? 
He went home with a bitterness of disgust 
in his mind far more intense and tragical 
than appeared to be at all necessary in the 
circumstances, and which only the fact that 
this was his first beginning in real life, and 
that his imagination had never contemplated 
the prominent position of the butter-shop 
and the Devonshire Dairy, in what he fondly 
called his new sphere, could have justified. 
Perhaps no new sphere ever came up to the 
expectations of the neophyte ; but to come, 
if not with too much gospel, yet with an in- 
tellectual Christian mission, an evangelist of 
refined nonconformity, an apostle of thought 
and religious opinion, and to sink suddenly 
into “ coorses ” of sermons and statistics of 
seat-letting in Salem — into tea-parties of 
deacons’ wives, and singing-classes — into the 
complacent society of those good people who 
were conscious of doing so much for the 
chapel and supporting the minister— that 
was a downfall not to be lightly thought of. 
Salem itself, and the new pulpit, which had 
a short time ago represented to poor Vin- 
cent that tribune from which he was to in- 
fluence the world, that point of vantage 
which was all a true man needed for the 
making of his career, dwindled into a miser- 
able scene of trade before his disenchanted 
eyes — a preaching shop, where his success 
was to be measured by the seat-letting, and 
his soul decanted out into periodical issue 
under the seal of Tozer & Co. Such, alas ! 
were the indignant thoughts with which, the 
old Adam rising bitter and strong within 
him, the young Nonconformist hastened 
home. 

And She was Lady Western — the gayest 
and brightest and highest luminary in all 
the society of Carlingford. As well love the 
moon, who no longer descends to Endymion, 
as lift presumptuous eyes to that sweeter 
planet which was as much out of reach of 
the Dissenting minister. Poor fellow! his 


room did not receive a very cheerful inmate 
when he shut the door upon the world, and 
sat down with his thoughts. 

CHAPTER V. 

It was about this time, when Mr. Vincent 
was deeply cast down about his prospects, 
and saw little comfort before or around him, 
and when, consequently, ’ an interest apart 
from himself, and which could detach his 
thoughts from Salem and its leading mem- 
bers, was of importance, that his mother’s 
letters began to grow specially interesting. 
Vincent'could not quite explain how it was, 
but unquestionably those female epistles had 
expanded all at once ; and instead of the lim- 
ited household atmosphere hitherto breath- 
ing in them — an atmosphere confined by the 
straight cottage walls, shutting in the little 
picture which the absent son knew so well, 
and in which usually no figure appeared but 
those of his pretty sister Susan, and their 
little servant, and a feminine neighbor or 
two — instead of those strict household limits, 
the world, as we have said, had expanded 
round the widow’s pen ; the cottage walls 
or windows seemed to have opened out to 
disclose the universe beyond : life itself, and 
words the symbols of life, seemed quickened 
and running in a fuller current; and the 
only apparent reason for all this revolution 
was that one new acquaintance had inter- 
rupted Mrs. Vincent’s seclusion, — one only 
visitor, who, from an unexpected call, re- 
corded with some wonderment a month or 
two before, had gained possession of the 
house apparently, and was perpetually re- 
ferred to— by Susan, in her gradually short- 
ening letters, with a certain timidity and re- 
luctance to pronounce his name — by the 
mother with growing frequency and confi- 
dence. Vincent, a little jealous of this new 
influence, had out of the depth of his own 
depression written with some impatience to 
ask who this Mr. Fordham was, and how he 
had managed to establish himself so confi- 
dentially in the cottage, when his mother’s 
letter astounded him with the following piece 
of news : — 

“ My dearest Boy,— Mr. Fordham is, 
or at least will be— or, if I must be cautious, 
as your poor dear papa always warned me I 
should — wishes very much, and I hope will 
succeed in being — your brother, my own 


SALEM CHAPEL. 123 


Arthur. This is sudden news, but you know, 
and I have often told you, that a crisis al- 
ways does seem to arrive suddenly ; however 
much you may have been looking for it, or 
making up your mind to it, it does come like 
a blow at the time ; and no doubt there is 
sornething in human nature to account for 
it, if I was a philosopher, like your dear 
papa and you. Yes, my dear boy, that is 
how it is. Of course, I have known for 
some time past that he must have had a 
motive — no mother could long remain igno- 
rant of that ; and I can’t say but what, lik- 
ing Mr. Fordham so much, and seeing him 
every way so unexceptionable^ except, per- 
haps, in the way of means, which we know 
nothing about, and which I have always 
thought a secondary consideration to char- 
acter, as I always brought up my children to 
think, I was very much pleased. For you 
know, my dear boy, life is uncertain with 
the strongest ; and I am becoming an old 
woman, and you will marry no doubt, and 
what is to become of Susan unless she does 
the same ? So I confess I was pleased to 
see Mr. Fordham’s inclinations showing 
themselves. And now, dear Arthur, Fve 
given them my blessing, and they are as 
happy as ever they can be, and nothing is 
wanting to Susan’s joy but your sympathy. 
I need not suggest to my dear boy to write 
a few words to his sister to make her feel 
that he shares our happiness ; for Providence 
has blessed me in a^ectionate children, and 
I can trust the instincts of my Arthur’s 
heart ; and O my dear son, how thankful 
I ought to be, and how deeply I ought to 
feel God’s blessings ! He has been a father 
to the fatherless, and the strength of the 
widow. To think that before old age comes 
upon me, and while I am still able to enjoy 
the sight of your prosperity, I should have 
the happiness of seeing you comfortably set- 
tled, and in the way to do your master’s 
work, and make yourself a good position, 
and Susan so happily provided for, and in- 
stead of losing her, a new son to love — in- 
deed, I am overpowered, and can scarcely 
hold up my head under my blessings. 

“ Write immediately, my dearest boy, that 
we may have the comfort of your concur- 
rence and sympathy, and I am always with 
much love, 

“ My Arthur’s loving mother, 

“E. S. Vincent. 

<(p,S. — Mr. Fordham’s account of his cir- 
cumstances seems quite satisfactory. He is 
not in any profession, but has enough, he 
says, to live on very comfortably, and is to 
give me more particulars afterwards ; which, 
indeed, I am ashamed to think he could im- 
agine necessary, as it looks like want of 


trust, and as if Susan’s happiness was not 
the first thing with us — but indeed I must 
learn to be prudent and self-interested for 
your sakes.” 

It was with no such joyful feelings as his 
mother’s that Vincent read this letter. Per- 
haps it was the jealousy with which he had 
heard of this unknown Mr. Fordham sud- 
denly jumping into the friendship of the cot- 
tage whicl^ made him contemplate with a 
most glum and suspicious aspect the stran- 
ger’s promotion into the love of Susan, and 
the motherly regard of Mrs. Vincent. “ Hang 
the fellow ! who was he ? ” the young minister 
murmured over his spoiled breakfast ; and 
there appeared to him in a halo of sweet 
memories as he had never seen them in 
reality, the simple graces of his pretty sister, 
who was as much above the region of the 
Phoebe Tozers as that inefiable beauty her- 
self who had seized with a glance the vacant 
throne of poor Arthur Vincent’s heart. There 
was nothing inefiable about Susan — but her 
brother had seen no man even in Homerton 
W’hom he would willingly see master of her 
affections ; and he was equally startled, dis- 
satisfied, and alarmed by this information. 
Perhaps his mother’s unworldliness was ex- 
cessive. He imagined that he would have 
exacted more positive information about the 
fortunes of a stranger who had suddenly ap- 
peared without any special business there, 
who had no profession, and who might dis- 
appear lightly as he came, breaking poor 
Susan’s heart. Mr. Vincent forgot entirely 
the natural process by which, doubtless his 
mother’s affections had been wooed and won 
as well as Susan’s. To him it was a stran- 
ger who had crept into the house, and gained 
ascendency there. Half in concern for Su- 
san, half in jealousy for Susan’s brother 
eclipsed, but believing himself to be entirely 
actuated by the former sentiment, the young 
minister wrote his mother a hurried, anxious, 
not too good-tempered note, begging her to 
think how important a matter this was, and 
not to come to too rapid a conclusion ; and 
after he had thus relieved his feelings, went 
out to his day’s work in a more than usually 
uncomfortable frame of mind. Mrs. Vin- 
cent congratulated herself upon her son’s 
happy settlement, as well as upon her daugh- 
ter’s engagement. What if Mr. Fordham 
should turn out as unsatisfactory as Salem ^ 


124 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


Chapel? His day’s work was a round of 
visits, which were not very particularly to 
Mr. Vincent’s mind. It was the day for his 
weekly call upon Mr. Tufton and various 
other members of the congregation not more 
attractive ; and at Siloam Cottage he was re- 
minded of Mrs. Hilyard, whom he had not 
seen again. Here at least was something to 
be found different from the ordinary level. 
He went up to Back Grove Street, not with- 
out a vague expectaton in his mind, wonder- 
ing if that singular stranger would look as 
unlike the rest of his flock to-day as she had 
done on the former occasion. But when 
Vincent emerged into the narrow street, 
what was that unexpected object which 
threw the young man into such sudden agi- 
tation ? His step quickened unconsciously 
into the rapid, silent stride of excitement. 
He was at the shabby door before any of the 
onlookers had so much as perceived him in 
the street. J'or once more the narrow pave 
ment owned a little tattered crowd gazing at 
the pawing horses, the big footman, the 
heavenly chariot ; and doubtless the celestial 
visitor must be within. 

Mr. Vincent did not pause to think whether 
he ought to disturb the interview which, no 
doubt, was going on up-stairs. He left him- 
self no time to consider punctilios or even 
to think what was right in the matter. He 
went up with that swell of excitement some- 
how winging his feet and making his foot- 
steps light. How sweet that low murmur of 
conversation within as ho reached the door ! 
Another moment and Mrs. Hilyard herself 
opened it, looking out with some surprise, 
her dark thin head, in its black lace ker- 
chief, standing out against the bit of shabby 
drab-colored wall visible through the open- 
ing of the door. A look of surprise for one 
moment, then a gleam of something like 
mirth lighted in the dark eyes, and the thin 
lines about her mouth moved, though no 
smile came. ' “ It is you, Mr. Vincent ? — 
come in,” she said. “ I should not have ad- 
mitted any other visitor, but you shall come 
in, as you are my ghostly adviser. Sit 
down. My dear, this gentleman is my min- 
ister and spiritual guide.” 

And She, sitting there in all her splendor, 
casting extraordinary lights of beauty around 
her upon the mean apartment, perfuming 
the air and making it musical with that rus- 


tle of woman’s robes which had never been 
out of poor Vincent’s ears since he saw her 
first; — She lifted her lovely face, smiled, 
and bowed her beautiful head to the young 
man who could have liked to go down on 
his knees, not to ask anything, but simply to 
worship. As he dared not do that, he sat 
down awkwardly upon the chair Mrs. Hil- 
yard pointed to, and said, with embarrass- 
ment, that he feared he had chosen a wrong 
time for his visit, and would return again — 
but nevertheless did not move from where he 
was. 

“No, indeed ; I am very glad to see you. 
My visitors are not so many, now-a-days, that 
I can afford to turn one from the door 
because another chooses to come the same 
day. My dear, you understand Mr. Vin- 
cent has had the goodness to take charge of 
my spiritual affairs,” said the mistress of the 
room, sitting down in her dark poor dress, 
beside her beautiful visitor, and laying her 
thin hands, still marked with traces of the 
coarse blue color which rubbed off her work, 
and of the scars of the needle, upon the table 
where that work lay. “ Thank Heaven, 
that’s a luxury the poorest of us needs not 
deny herself. I liked your sermon last Sun- 
day, Mr. Vincent. That about the fashion 
of treating serious things with levity, was 
meant for me. Oh, I didn’t dislike it, 
thank you ! One is pleased to think one’s 
self of so much consequence. There are 
more ways of keeping up one’s amour propre 
than your way, my lady. Now, don’t you 
mean to go ? You see I cannot possibly un- 
burden my mind to Mr. Vincent while you 
are here.” 

“ Did you ever hear anything so rude ? ” 
said the beauty, turning graciously to the 
young minister. “You call me a great lady, 
and all sorts of things, Hachel ; but I never 
could be as rude as you are, and as you 
always were as long as I remember.” 

“ My dear, the height of good-breeding is 
to be perfectly ill-bred when one pleases,” 
said Mrs. Hilyard, taking her work upon her 
knee and putting on her thimble; “but 
though you are w^onderfully pretty, yoi; 
never had the makings of a thorough fine 
lady in you. You can’t help desiring to 
please everybody— which, indeed, if there 
were no women in the world,” added that 
sharp observer, with a sudden glance at 


SALEM CHAPEL. 125 


Vincent, who saw the thin lines again move 
about her mouth, “ you might easily do 
without giving yourself much trouble. Mr. 
Vincent, if this lady wont leave us, might I 
trouble you to talk? For two strains of 
thought, carried on at the same moment, 
now that I’m out of society, are too exhaust- 
ing to me.” 

With which speech she gravely pinned 
her work to her knee, threaded her needle 
with a long thread of blue cotton, and began 
her work with the utmost composure, leav- 
ing her two visitors in the awkward Ute-a- 
Ute position which the presence of a third 
person, entirely absorbed in her own em- 
ployment, with eyes and face abstracted, 
naturally produces. Never in his life had 
Vincent been so anxious to appear to advan- 
tage — never had he been so totally deprived 
of the use of his faculties. His eager looks, 
his changing color, perhaps interceded for 
him with the beautiful stranger, who was 
not ignorant of those signs of subjugation 
which she saw so often. 

“ I think it was you that were so good as 
to clear the way for me the last time I was 
here,” she said, with the sweetest grace, 
raising those lovely eyes, which put even 
Tozer beside himself, to the unfortunate 
pastor’s face. “I remember fancying you 
must be a stranger here, as I had not seen 
you anywhere in society. Those wonderful 
little wretches never seem to come to any 
harm. They always appear to me to be 
scrambling among the horses’ feet. Fancy, 
Rachel, one of those boys who flourish in 
the back streets, with such rags — oh, such 
rags ! you could not possibly make them, if 
you were to try, with scissors — such perfec- 
tion must come of itself j had just pushed 
in before me, and I don’t know what I should 

have done, if Mr. (I beg your pardon) 

— if you had not cleared the way.” 

“ Mr. Vincent,” said Mrs. Hilyard, break- 
ing in upon Vincent’s deprecation. “ I am 
glad to hear you had somebody to help you 
in such a delicate distress. We poor women 
can’t afford to be so squeamish. What ! are 
you going away ? My dear, be sure you say 
down-stairs that you brought that poor crea- 
ture some tea and sugar, and how grateful 
she was. That explains everything, you 
know, and does my lady credit at the same 
time. Good-by. Well, I’ll kiss you if you 
insist upon it j but what can Mr. Vincent 


think to see such an operation performed 
between us ? There ! my love, you can 
make the men do what you like, but you 
know of old you never could conquer me.” 

“ Then you will refuse over and over 
again — and you don’t mind what I say — and 
you know he’s in Lonsdale, and why he’s 
there, and all about him ” 

“ Hush,” said the dark woman, looking 
nil the darker as she stood in that bright 
creature’s shadow. “I know, and always 
will know, wherever he goes, and that he is 
after evil wherever he goes ; and I refuse, 
and always will refuse, — and my darling 
pretty Alice,” she cried, suddenly going up 
with rapid vehemence to the beautiful young 
woman beside her, and kissing once more 
the delicate rose-cheek to which her own 
made so great a contrast, “ I donH mind in 
the least what you say.” 

“ Ah, Rachel, I don’t understand you,” 
said Lady Western, looking at her wistfully. 

“ You never did, my dear ; but don’t for- 
get to mention about the tea and sugar as 
you go down-stairs,” said Mrs. Hilyard, sub- 
siding immediately, not without the usual 
gleam in her eyes and movement of her 
mouth, “ else it might be supposed you came 
to have your fortune told, or something like 
that ; and I wish your ladyship hon voyage, 
and no encounter with ragged boys in your 
way. Mr. Vincent,” she continued, with 
great gravity, standing in the middle of the 
room, when Vincent, trembling with excite- 
ment, afraid, with the embarrassing timidity 
of inferior position, to offer his services, yet 
chafing in his heart to be obliged to stay, 
reluctantly closed the door which he had 
opened for Lady Western’s exit, “tell me 
why a young man off your spirit loses such 
an opportunity of conducting the greatest 
beauty in Carlingford to her carriage ? Sup- 
pose she should come across another ragged 
boy, and faint on the stairs P ” 

“ I should liave been only too happy; but 
as I am not so fortunate as to know Lady 
Western,” said the young minister, hesitat- 
ing, “ I feared to presume ” 

With an entirely changed aspect his 
strange companion interrupted him. “ Lady 
Western could not think that any man whom 
she met in my house presumed in offering 
her a common civility,” said Mrs. Hilyard, 
with the air of a duchess, and an imperious 
gleam out of her dark eyes. Then she rec- 


126 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


ollected herself, gave ner startled visitor a 
comical look, and dropped into her chair, 
before which that coarsest of poor needle- 
woman’s work was lying. “ My house ! it 
does look like a place to inspire respect, to 
be sure,” she continued, with a hearty per- 
ception of the ludicrous, which Vincent was 
much too pre-occupied to notice. “ What 
fools we all are! but my dear Mr. Vincent, 
you are too modest. My Lady Western, 
could not frown upon anybody who honored 
her with such a rapt observation. Don’t 
fall in love with her, I beg of you. If she 
were merely a flirt, I shouldn’t mind, but 
out of her very goodness she’s dangerous. 
She can’t bear to give pain to anybody, 
which of course implies that she gives 
double and treble pain when the time comes. 
There ! I’ve warned you ; for of course you’ll 
meet again.” 

“ Small chance of that,” said Vincent, 
who had been compelling himself to remain 
quiet, and restraining his impulse, now that 
the vision had departed, to rush away out of 
the impoverished place, “ Small chance of 
that,” he repeated, drawing a long breath, 
as he listened with intent ears to the roll of 
the carriage%hich carried Her away ; “ soci- 
ety in Carlingford has no room for a poor 
Dissenting minister.” 

“ All the better for him,” said Mrs. Hil- 
yard, regarding him with curious looks, and 
discerning with female acuteness the haze of 
excitement and incipient passion which sur- 
rounded him. “ Society’s all very well for 
people who have been brought up in it; 
but for a young recluse like you, that don’t 
know the world, it’s murder. Don’t look 
affronted. The reason is, you expect too 
much — twenty times more than anybody 
evgr finds. But you don’t attend to my 
philosophy. Thinking of your sermon, Mr. 
Vincent ? And how is our friend the but- 
terman? I trust life begins to look more 
cheerful to you under his advice.” 

“ Life ? ” said the pre-occupied minister, 
who was gazing at the spot where that lovely 
apparition had been ; “ I find it change it’s 
aspects perpetually. You spoke of Lonsdale 
just now, did you not ? Is it possible that 
you know that little place ? My mother and 
sister live there.” 

“ I am much interested to know that you 
have a mother and sister,” said the poor 


needlewoman before him, looking up with 
calm, fine-lady impertinence in his face. 

“ But you did not hear me speak of Lons- 
dale ; it was her ladyship who mentioned it. 
As for me, I interest myself in what is going 
on close by, Mr. Vincent. I am quite ab- 
sorbed in the chapel ; I want to know how 
you get on, and all about it. I took that 
you said on Sunday about levity deeply to 
heart. I entertain a fond hope that you will 
see me improve under your ministrations, 
even though I may never come up to the 
butterman’s standard. Some people have 
too high an ideal. If you are as much of 
an optimist as your respected deacon, I fear 
it will be ages before I can manage to make 
you approve of me.” 

Vincent’s wandering thoughts were recalled 
a little by this attack. “ I hope,” he said, 
rousing himself, “ that you don’t think me 
so inexperienced as not to know that you 
are laughing at me ? But indeed I should 
be glad to believe that the services at the 
chapel might sometimes perhaps be some 
comfort to you,” added the young pastor, 
assuming the dignity of his office. He met 
his penitent’s eyes at the moment, and fal- 
tered, moon-struck as he was, wondering if 
she saw through and through him, and knew 
that he was neither thinking of consolation 
nor of clerical duties, but only of those lin- 
gering echoes which, to any ears but his own, 
were out of hearing. There w'as little rea- 
son to doubt the acute perceptions of "that 
half-amused, half-malicious glance. 

“ Comfort ! ” she cried ; “ what a very 
strange suggestion to make ! Why, all the 
old churches in all the old ages have offered 
comfort. I thought you new people had 
something better to give us; enlighten- 
ment,” she said, with a gleam of secret 
mockery, throwing the W'ord like a stone — 
“ religious freedom, private judgment. De- 
pend upon it, that is the role expected from 
you by the butterman. Comfort ! one has 
that in Rome.” 

“You never can have that but in conjunc- 
tion with truth, and truth is not to be found 
in Rome,” said Vincent pricking up his ears 
at so familiar a challenge. 

“ We’ll not argue, though you do commit 
yourself by an assertion,” said Mrs. Hilyard ; 
“ but O you innocent yonng man, where is 
the comfort to come from ? Comfort will not 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


let your seats and fill your chapel, even 
granting that you knew how to communi- 
cate it. I prefer to be instructed, for my 
part. You are just at the age, and in the 
circumstances, to do that.” 

“ I fear you still speak in jest,” said the 
minister, with some doubt, yet a little grat- 
ification ; “ hut I shall be only too happy to 
have been the means of throwing any light 
to you upon the doctrines of our faith.” 

For a moment the dark eyes gleamed with 
something like laughter. But there was 
nothing ill-natured in the amusement with 
which his strange new friend contemplated 
the young pastor in the depressions and con- 
fidences of his youth. She answered with a 
mock gravity which, at that moment, he was 
by no means clear-sighted enough to see 
through. 

“ Yes,” she said, demurely, “ be sure you 
take advantage of your opportunities, and 
instruct us as long as you have any faith in 
instruction. Leave consolation to another 
time : but you don’t attend to me, Mr. Vin- 
cent ; come another day : come on Monday, 
when I shall be able to criticise your sermons, 
and we shall have no Lady Western to put 
us out. Those beauties are confusing, don’t 
you think ? Only, I entreat you, whatever 
you do, don’t fall in love with her ; and now, 
since I know you wish it, you may go away.” 

Vincent stammered a faint protest as he 
accepted his dismissal, but rose promptly, 
glad to be released. Another thought, how- 
ever, seemed to strike Mrs. Hilyard as she 
shook hands with him. 

“ Do your mother and sister in Lonsdale 
keep a school?” she said. “Nay, pray 
don’t look affronted. Clergymen’s widows 
and daughters very often do in the Church. 
I meant no impertinence in this case. They 
don’t ? well, that is all I wanted to know. I 
dare say they are not likely to be in the way 
of dangerous strangers. Good-by ; and you 
must come again on Monday, when I shall 
be alone.” 

“But — dangerous strangers^may I ask 
you to explain ? ” said Vincent, with a little 
alarm, instinctively recurring to his threat- 
ened brother-in-law, and the news which had 
disturbed his composure that morning be- 
fore he came out. 

“ I can’t explain ; and you would not be 
■ any the wiser,” said Mrs. Hilyard, peremp- 
torily. “Now, good-morning, I am glad 


127 

they don’t keep a school ; because, you 
know,” she added, looking full into his eyes, 
as if defying him to make any meaning out 
of her words, “ it is very tiresome, tedious 
work, and wears poor ladies out. There ! — 
good-by ; next day you come I shall be very 
glad to see you, and well have no fine ladies 
to put us out.” 

Vincent had no resource but to let himself 
out of the shabby little room which this 
strange woman inhabited as if it had been a 
palace. The momentary alarm roused by" 
her last words, and the state of half offence, 
half interest, into which, notwithstanding 
his pre-occupation, she had managed to rouse 
him, died away, however, as he re-entered 
the poor little street, which was now a road 
in Fairyland instead of a lane in Carling- 
ford, to his rapt eyes. Golden traces of 
those celestial wheels surely lingered still 
upon the way ; they still went rolling and 
echoing over the poor young minister’s heart, 
which he voluntarily threw down before that 
heavenly car of Juggernaut. Every other 
impression faded out -of his mind, and the 
infatuated young man made no efibrt of re- 
sistance, but hugged the enchanted chain. 
He had seen Her — spoken with Her — ^hence- 
forward was of her acquaintance. He cast 
reason to the winds, and probability, and 
every convention of life. Did anybody sup- 
pose that all the world leagued against him 
could prevent him from seeing her again ? 
He went home with an unspeakable elation, 
longing, and excitement, and at the same 
time with a vain floating idea in his mind 
that, thus inspired, no height of eloquence 
was impossible to him, and that triumph of 
every kind was inevitable. He went home, 
and got his writing-desk, and plunged into 
his lecture, nothing doubting that he could 
transfer to his work that glorious tumult of 
his thoughts ; and with his paper before him, 
wrote three words, and sat three hours star- 
ing into the roseate air, and dreaming dreams 
! as wild as any Arabian tale. Such was the 
first effort of that chance encounter, in which 
the personages were not Lady Western and 
the poor Dissenting minister, but Beauty and 
Love, perennial hero and heroine ^of the ro- 
mance that never ends. 

CHAPTER VI. 

It was only two days after this eventful 
meeting that Vincent, idling and meditative 


128 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


as was natural in such a condition of mind, 
strayed into Masters’ shop to buy some 
books. It would have been difficult for him 
to have explained why he went there, ex- 
cept, perhaps, because it was the last place 
in the world which his masters at the chapel 
would have advised him to enter. For there 
was another bookseller in the town, an evan- 
gelical man, patronized by Mr. Bury, the 
whilom rector, where all the Tract Society’s 
publications were to be had, not to speak of 
a general range of literature quite wide 
enough for the minister of Salem. Masters’ 
was a branch of the London Masters, and, 
as might be supposed, was equally amazed 
and indignant at the intrusion of a Dissenter 
among its consecrated book-shelves. He 
was allowed to turn over all the varieties of 
the Christian Year on a side-table before any 
of the attendants condescended to notice his 
presence ; and it proved so difficult to find 
the books he wanted, and so much more dif- 
ficult to find anybody who would take the 
trouble of looking for them, that the young 
Nonconformist, who was sufficiently ready 
to take offence, began to get hot and impa- 
tient, and had all but strode out of the shop, 
with. a new mortification to record to the dis- 
advantage of Carlingford. But just as he 
began to get very angry, the door swung 
softly open, and a voice became audible, lin- 
gering, talking to somebody before entering. 
Vincent stopped speaking, and stared in the 
shopman’s astonished face when these tones 
came to his ear. He fell back instantly upon 
the side-table and the Christian Year, for- 
getting his own business, and what he had 
been saying — forgetting everything except 
that She was there, and that in another mo- 
ment they would stand again within the same 
walls. He bent over the much-multiplied 
volume with a beating heart, poising in one 
hand a tiny miniature copy just made to slip 
within the pocket of an Anglican waistcoat, 
and in the other the big red-leaved and 
morocco-bound edition, as if weighing their 
respective merits — put beside himself, in 
fact, if the truth must be told, oblivious of 
his errand, his position — of everything but 
the fact that She was at the door. She came 
in with a sweet flutter and rustle of sound, 
a perfumed air entering with her, as the un- 
suspected enthusiast thought, and began to 
lavish smiles, for which he would have given 
half his life, upon the people of the place, 


who flew to serve her. She had her tau- . , 
in her hand, with a list of what she 
and held up a dainty forefinger as she 
reading the items. As one thing ter 
another was mentioned. Masters and hi- ra'. u 
darted off in search of it. There were h r 
tunately enough to give each of them a s . • 
arate errand, and the principal rcn^.ad 
shining wares upon the counter before. T; 
and bathed in her smiles, while all his r 
ellites kept close at hand, listening with •. >! 
their ears for another commission. Jh*. 
Masters ! happy shopmen ! that one iio 
looked so blank when Vincent stop^ ' d soort, 
at the sound of her voice and stared at him, 
had forgotten all about Vincent. She was 
there ; and if a little impromptu litany would 
have pleased her ladyship, it is probable that 
it would have been got up on the spot after 
the best models, and that even the Noncon- 
formist would have waived his objections to 
liturgical worship and led the responses. 
But Masters’ establishment offered practica? 
homage— -only the poor Dissenting minister, 
divided between eagerness and fear, stood 
silent, flushed with excitement, turning wist- 
ful looks upon her, waiting till perhaps she 
might turn round and see him, and letting 
fall out of his trembling fingers those unre- 
garded editions of the Anglican lyre. 

“ And two copies of the Christian Year,^* 
said Lady Western, suddenly. “ Oh, thank 
you so much ! but I know they are all on the 
side-table, and I shall go and look at them. 
Not the very smallest copy, Mr. Masters, 
and not that solemn one with the red edges ; 
something pretty, with a little ornament and 
gilding : they are for two little protegees of 
mine. Oh, here is exactly what I want! 
another one like this, please. How very 
obliging all your people are,” said her lady- 
ship, benignly, as the nearest man dashed 
off headlong to bring what she wanted — 
“ but I think it is universal in Carlingford ; 
and indeed the manners of our country peo- 
ple in general have improved very much of 
late. Don’t you think so ? oh, there can’t 
be a question about it ! ” 

“ I beg your ladyship’s pardon, I am sure ; 
but perhaps, my lady, it is not safe to judge 
the general question from your ladyship’s 
point of view,” said the polite bookseller 
with a bow. 

“ Oh, pray don’t say so ; I should be 
wretched if I thought you took more trouble 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


for me than for other people, said the young 
Dowager, with a sweetness which filled Vin- 
cent’s heart with jealous pangs. She was 
close by his side — so close that those sacred 
robes rustled in his very ear, and her shawl 
brushed his sleeve. The poor young man 
took off his hat in a kind of ecstasy. If she 
did not notice him, what did it matter ? — 
silent adoration, speechless homage, could 
not affront a queen. 

• And it was happily very far from affront- 
ing Lady Western. She turned round with 
a little curiosity, and looked up in his face. 

“ O Mr.— Mr. Vincent,” cried the beauti- 
ful creature, brightening in recognition. 
“ How do you do ? I suppose you are a res- 
ident in’ Carlingford now, are not you ? Par- 
don me, that I did not see you when I came 
in. How very, very good it is of you to go 
and see my — my friend ! Did you ever see 
anytliing so dreadful as the place where she 
lives ? and isn’t she an extraordinary crea- 
ture ? Thank you, Mr. Masters ; that’s ex- 
actly what I want. I do believe she might 
have been Lord Chancellor, or something, if 
she had not been a woman,” said the en- 
chantress, once more lifting her lovely eyes 
with an expression of awe to Vincent’s face. 

“ She seems a very remarkable person,” 
said Vincent. “ To see her where she is, 
makes one feel how insignificant are the cir- 
cumstances of life.” 

“ Really ! now, how do you make out 
that?” said Lady Western; “for, to tell 
the truth, I think, when I see her, oh, how 
important they are ! and that I’d a great deal 
rather die than live so. But you clover peo- 
ple take such strange views of things. Now 
tell me how you make that out ? ” 

“ Nay,” said Vincent, lowering his voice 
with a delicious sense of having a subject to 
be confidential upon, “ you know what con- 
ditions of existence all her surroundings im- 
ply ; yet the most ignorant could not doubt 
for a moment her perfect superiority to them 
— a superiority so perfect,” he added, with 
a sudden insight which puzzled even him- 
self, “ that it is not necessary to assert it.” 

“ Oh, to be sure,” said Lady Western, 
coloring a little, and with a momentary 
hauteur, “of course a Russ 1 mean a gen- 
tlewoman — must always look the same to a 
certain extent I but, alas ! I am only a very 
commonplace little woman,” continued the 
beauty, brightening into those smiles which 

CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


129 

perhaps might be distributed too liberally, 
but which intoxicated for the moment every 
man on whom they fell. “ I think those 
circumstances which you speak of so disre- 
spectfully are everything ! I have not a 
great soul to triumph over them. I should 
break down, or they would overcome me — 
oh, you need not 'shake your head ! I know 
I am right so far as I myself am concerned.” 

“ Indeed I cannot think so,” said the in- 
toxicated young man ; “ you would make 
any circumstances ” 

“ What ? ” 

But the bewildered youth made no direct 
reply. He only gazed at her, grew very red, 
and said, suddenly, “ I beg your pardon,” 
stepping back in confusion, like the guilty 
man he was. The lady blushed too as her 
imploring eyes met that unexpected re- 
sponse. Used as she was to adoration, she 
felt the silent force of the compliment with- 
held — it was a thousand times sweeter in its 
delicate suggestiveness and reserv^e of in- 
cense than any effusion of words. They were 
both a little confused for the moment, poor 
Vincent’s momentary betrayal of himself 
having somehow suddenly dissipated the 
array of circumstances which surrounded 
and separated two persons so far apart from 
each other in every conventional aspect. 
The first to regain her place and composure 
was of course Lady Western, who made him 
a pretty playful courtesy, and broke into a 
low, sweet ring of laughter. 

“ Now I shall never know whether you 
meant to be complimentary or contemptu- 
ous,” cried the young Dowager, “ which is 
hard upon a creature with such a love of ap- 
probation as our friend says I have. How- 
ever, I forgive you, if you meant to be very 
cutting, for her sake. It is so very kind of 
you to go to see her, and I am sure she en- 
joys your visits. Thank you, Mr. Masters, 
that is all. Have you got the two copies of 
the Christian Year^ Put them into the 
carriage, please. Mr. Vincent, I am going 
to have the last of my summer-parties next 
Thursday — ^twelve o’clock — will you come? 

only a cup of coffee, you know, or tea if 

you prefer it, and talk au discretion. I 
shall be happy to see you, and I have some 
nice friends, and one or two good pictures ; 
so there you have an account of all the at- 
tractions my house can boast of. Do come : 
it will be my last party this season, and I 


130 CHRONICLES OJ 

rather want it to be a great success,” said 
the syren, looking up with her sweet eyes. 

Vincent could not tell what answer he 
made in his rapture ; but the next thing he 
was properly conscious of was the light 
touch of her hand upon his arm as he led 
her to her carriage, some sudden courageous 
impulse having prompted him to secure for 
himself that momentary blessedness. He 
walked forth in a dream, conducting that 
heavenly vision, and there, outside, stood the 
celestial chariqt with those pawing horses, 
and the children standing round with open 
mouth to watch the lovely lady’s progress. 
It was he who put her in with such pride 
and humbleness as perhaps only a generous 
but inexperienced young man, suddenly sur- 
prised into passion, could be capable of — 
ready to kiss the hem of her garment, or do 
any other preposterous act of homage — and 
just as apt to blaze up into violent self- 
assertion should any man attempt to hum- 
ble him who had been thus honored. While 
he stood watching the carriage out of sight, 

, Masters himself came out to tell the young 
Nonconformist, whose presence that digni- 
fied tradesman had been loftily unconscious 
of a few minutes before, that they had found 
the book he wanted ; and Vincent, thrilling 
in every pulse with the unlooked-for bless- 
edness which had befallen him, was not 
sorry, when he dropped out of the clouds at 
the bookseller’s accost, to re-enter that place 
where this enchantment still hovered, by 
way of calming himself down ere he returned 
to those prose regions which were his own 
lawful habitation. He saw vaguely the 
books that were placed on the counter before 
him — ^heard vaguely the politp purling of 
Masters’ voice, all-solicitous to make up for 
the momentary incivility with which he had 
treated a friend of Lady Western — and was 
conscious of taking out his purse and paying 
something for the volume, which he carried 
away with him. But the book might have 
been Sanscrit for anything Mr. Vincent cared 
— and he would have paid any fabulous price 
for it with the meekest resignation. His at- 
I tempt to appear moderately interested, and 
to conduct this common transaction as if he 
had all his wits about him, was sufficient oc- 
cupation just at this moment. His head was 
turned. There should have been roses blos- 
soming all along the bare pavement of 
George Street to account for the sweet 


^ CARLINGFORU. 

gleams bf light which warmed the entire at- 
mosphere as he traversed that commonplace 
way. Not only the interview just passed, 
but the meeting to come, bewildered him 
with an intoxicating delight. Here, then, 
was the society he had dreamed of, opening 
its perfumed doors to receive him. From 
Mrs. Tozer’s supper-table to the bowery 
gates of Grange Lane was a jump which, ten 
days ago, would of itself have made the 
young minister giddy with satisfaction and ' 
pleasure. Now these calm emotions had 
ceased to move him ; for not society, but a 
sweeter syren, had thrown chains of gold 
round the unsuspecting Nonconformist. 
With Her, Back Grove Street was Paradise. 
Where her habitation was, or what he should 
see there, was indifferent to Vincent. He 
was again to meet Herself. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The days which intervened between this 
meeting and Lady Western’s party were 
spent in a way which the managers of Salem 
would have been far from approving of. Mr. 
Vincent, indeed, was rapt out of himself, 
out of his work, out of all the ordinary 
regions of life and thought. When he sat 
down to his sermons, his pen hung idly in 
his hand, and his mind, wilfully cheating it- 
self by that semblance of study, went off into 
long delicious reveries, indescribable, intan- 
gible — a secret sweet intoxication which for- 
bade labor, yet nourished thought. Though 
he sometimes did not write a word in an 
hour, so deep was the aspect of studiousness 
displayed by the young pastor at his writing- 
desk, and so entire the silence he maintained 
in his room, shut up in that world of dreams 
which nobody knew anything of, that his 
landlady, who was one of his hearers, com- 
municated the fact to Tozer, and expatiated 
everywhere upon the extreme devotion to 
study displayed by the new minister. Old 
Mr. Tufton, who had been in the habit of 
putting together the disjointed palaver which 
ho called a sermon on the Saturday morn- 
ing, shook his head over the information, 
and doubted that his young brother was re- 
sorting more to carnal than to spiritual 
means of filling his chapel ; but the members 
of Salem generally heard the rumor with 
pride, and felt a certain distinction accrue to 
themselves from the possibility that their 
pastor might ruin his health by over-study. 


SALEM 

It was a now sensation in Salem ; and the 
news, as it was whispered about, certainly 
came to the ears of a few of those young men 
and thinkers, principally poor lawyers’ clerks 
and drapers’ assistants, whom Tozer was so 
anxious to reach, and drew two or three 
doubtful, genteel hearers to the chapel, 
where Mr. Vincent’s sermon, though no bet- 
ter than usual, and in reality dashed off at 
the last moment in sheer desperation, when 
necessity momentarily thrust the dreams 
away, was listened to with a certain awe and 
devout attention, solely due to the toil it was 
reported, to hdiVe cost. The young minister 
himself came out of the pulpit remorseful 
and ashamed, feeling that he had neglected 
his duty, and thoroughly disgusted with the 
superficial production, just lighted up with 
a few fiery sentences of that eloquence which 
belongs to excitement and passion, which he 
had just delivered. But Tozer and all the 
deacons buzzed approbation. They were 
penetrated with the conviction that he had 
worked hard at his sermon, and given them 
his best, and were not to be undeceived by 
the quality of the work itself, which was a 
secondary matter. Mpre deeply disgusted 
and contemptuous than ever was the young 
pastor at the end of that Sunday — disgusted 
with himself to have done his work so poorly 
— contemptuous of those who were pleased 
with it — his heart swelling with mortified 
pride to think that what he thought so un- 
worthy of him w'as more appreciated than 
his best efforts. For he did not know the re- 
port that had gone abroad ; he did not know 
that, while brooding over his own rising 
passion, and absorbed in dreams with which 
Salem had nothing to do, the little world 
•around him was complacently giving him 
credit for a purpose of wearing himself out 
in its behalf. The sermons so hastily writ- 
ten, thrust into a corner by the overpower- 
ing enchantment of those reveries, were not 
the only sin he had to charge against him- 
self. He could not bring himself to bear 
the irksome society that surrounded him, in 
the state of elevation and excitement he was 
in. Tozer was unendurable, and Phoebe to 
be avoided at all costs. He did not even 
pay his promised visit to Mrs. Hilyard, nor 
go to Siloam Cottage as usual. In short, 
he spent the days in a kind of dream, avoid- 
ing all his duties, paying no visits, doing no 


CHAPEL. 131 

pastoral work, neglecting the very sermon 
over which his landlady saw hihi hanging so 
many silent hours, without knowing that all 
the vacant atmosphere between him and 
that blank sheet of paper, in which she saw 
nothing, w'as peopled with fairy visitants and 
unreal scenes to the dreamy eyes of her 
lodger. Such were the first effects of Circe’s 
cup upon the young minister. He indulged 
himself consciously, with apologetic self- 
remonstrances as Thursday approached. 
After that day, life was to go on as usual. 
No — not as usual-^with a loftier aim and a 
higher inspiration ; but the season of dreams 
was to be over when he had real admittance 
into that Eden garden, where the woman of 
all women wandered among her flowers. 
He thought what he was to say to her on 
that eventful day — how he should charm her 
into interest in his difficulties, and beautify 
his office, and the barren spot in which ho 
exercised it, with her sympathy. He im- 
agined himself possessed of her ear, certain 
of a place by her side, a special guest of her 
own election. He was not vain, nor deeply 
persuaded of his own importance ; yet all. 
this seemed only natural to his excited im- 
agination. He saw himself by her side in 
that garden of beatitudes, disclosing to her 
all that was in his heart ; instinctively he re- 
called all that the poets have said of woman 
the consoler — woman the inspirer. When 
he had gained that priceless sympathy, what 
glorious amends he should make for the few 
days’ indolence to which he now gave way ! 
Thus in his inexperience he went on, prepar- 
ing for himself, as any one a little wiser 
could have seen at a glance, one pf the bit- 
terest disappointments of early life. 

Thursday came, a day of days — such a day 
as people reckon by months after ; a soft 
and bright autumnal morning, breathing 
like spring. As Vincent issued from his 
own door and took his way along George 
Street to Grange Lane, he saw the curate 
of St. Roque’s walking before him in the 
same direction ; but Mr. Wentworth himself 
was not more orthodoxly clerical in every 
detail of his costume than was the young 
Nonconformist, who was going, not to Lady 
Western’s breakfast-party, but into the 
Bower of Bliss, the fool’s paradise of his 
youth. Mr. Wentworth, it is true, was to 
see Lucy Wodehouse there, and was a true 


132 ’ CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


lover ; but he walked without excitement 
to the green gate which concealed from him 
no enchanted world of delights, but only a 
familiar garden, with every turn of which 
he was perfectly acquainted, and which, 
even when Lucy was by his side, contained 
nothing ineifable or ecstatic. It was, to 
tell the truth, an autumnal garden, bright 
enough still with scarlet gleams of geranium 
and verbena, with a lawn of velvet smooth- 
ness, and no great diminution as yet in the 
shade of acacias and lime-trees, and every- 
thing in the most perfect order in the trim 
shrubberies, through the skilful mazes of 
W'hich some bright groups were already 
wandering, when Vincent passed through 
to the sunny open door. At the open win- 
dows within he could see other figures in a 
pleasant flutter of gay color and light dra- 
pery, as he advanced breathless to take his 
own place in that unknown Avorld. He 
heard his own name announced, and went 
in, with a chill of momentary doubt upon 
his high expectations, into the airy sunshiny 
room, with its gay, brilliant, rustling crowd, 
the ladies all bright and fresh in their pretty 
morning-dresses, and the din of talk and 
laughter confusing his unaccustomed ears. 
For a moment the stranger stood embar- 
rassed, looking round him, eagerly investi- 
gating the crowd for that one face, which 
was not only the sole face of woman in the 
world so far as he was concerned, but in 
reality the only face he knew in the gay 
party, where everybody except himself knew 
everybody else. Then he saw her, and his 
doubts were over. When she perceived 
him, she made a few steps forward to meet 
him and held out her hand. 

“ I am so glad to see you — how kind of 
you to come! ” said Lady Western; “and 
such a beautiful day — just what I wanted 
for my last fete. Have you seen my friend 
again since I saw you, Mr. Vincent — quite 
well, I hope? Now, do .have some coffee — 
How do you do, Mr. Wentworth ? You have 
been here full five minutes, and you have 
never paid your respects to me. Even under 
the circumstances, you know, one cannot 
overlook such neglect.” 

“ I am too deeply flattered that your lady- 
ship should have observed my entrance to 
be able to make any defence.” said the 
curate of St. Roque’s who could speak to 


her as to any ordinary woman ; “ but as for 
circumstances ” 

“JOh dear, yes, we all know,” cried Lady 
Western, with her sweet laugh. “Was it 
you, Mr. Vincent, who were saying that cir- 
cumstances were everything in life ? oh, no, 
I beg your pardon, quite the reverse. I re- 
member it struck me as odd and clever. 
Now, I dare say, you two could quite settle 
that question. I am, such an ignoramus. 
So kind of you to come ! ” 

Vincent, was about to protest his delight 
in coming, and to deprecate the imputation 
of kindness, but ere he had spoken three 
words, he suddenly came to a stop, perceiv- 
ing that not only Lady Western’s attention 
but her ear was lost, and that already an- 
other candidate for her favor had possession 
of the field. He stepped back into the gay 
assembly, disturbing one group, the mem- 
bers of which all turned to look at him with 
'well-bred curiosity. He stood quite alone 
and silent for some time, waiting if, perhaps, 
he could catch the eye of Lady Western. 
But she was surrounded, swept away, car- 
ried off even from his neighborhood, while 
he stood gazing. And here was he left, out 
of the sunshine of her presence in the midst 
of Carlingford society, knowing nobody, 
while every face smiled and every tongue 
was busy but his own — talk au discretion ! 
such there certainly was, but Vincent had 
never in his life felt so preposterously alone, 
so dismally silent, so shut up in himself. 
If he had come to woo society, doubtless he 
could have plucked up a spirit, and made a 
little efibrt for his object. But he had come 
to see Her, flattering himself with vain 
dreams of securing her to himself — of wan- 
dering by her side through those garden- 
paths, of keeping near her whenever she 
moved — and the dream had intoxicated him 
more deeply than even he himself was aware 
of. Now he woke to his sober wits with a 
chill of mortification and disappointment not 
to be expressed. He stood silent, following 
her with his eyes as she glided about from 
one corner to the other of the crowded room. 
He had neither eyes nor ears for anything 
else. Beautiful as she had alw'uys been, she 
was lovelier than ever to-day, with her fair 
head uncovered and unadorned, her beauti- 
ful hair glancing in the gleams of sunshine, 
her tiny hands ungloved. Poor Vincent 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


drew near a window, when it dawned upon , 
his troubled perception that he was standing ; 
amidst all those chattering, laughing people, ! 
a silent statue of disappointment and "dis- 
may, and from that little refuge watched her 
as she made her progress. And, alas ! Lady 
Western assured everybody that they were 
“ so kind ” to come — she distributed her 
smiles, her kind w^ords, everywhere. She 
beamed upon the old men and the young, 
the handsome and the stupid, with equal 
sweetness. After awhile, as he stood watch- 
ing, Vincent b?gan to melt in his heart. 
She w'as hostess — she had the 'party’s pleas- 
ure to think of, not her own. If he could but 
help her, bring himself to her notice again 
in some other way ! Vincent made another 
step out of his window, and looked out 
eagerly with shy scrutiny. Nobody wanted 
his help. They stared at him, and whis- 
pered questions who he was. When he at 
length nerved himself to speak to his next 
neighbor, he met with a courteous response 
and no more. Society was not cruel, or 
repulsive, or severely exclusive, but simply 
did not know him, could not make out who 
he was, and was busy talking that conversa- 
tion of a limited sphere full of personal allu- 
sions into which no stranger could enter. 
Instead of the ineffable hour he expected, 
an embarrassing, unbearable tedium was 
the lot of the poor Dissenting minister by 
himself among the beauty, wit, and fashion 
of Carlingford. He would have stolen away 
but for the forlorn hope that things might 
mend— that Lady Western might return, 
and that the sunshine he had dreamed of 
would yet fall upon him. But no such hap- 
piness came to the unfortunate young min- 
ister. After awhile, a perfectly undistin- 
guished middle-aged individual charitably 
engaged Mr. Vincent in conversation ; and 
as they talked, and while the young man’s 
eager wistful eyes followed into every new 
combination of the little crowc^that one fair 
figure which had bewitched him, it became 
apparent that the company was flowing 
forth into the garden. At last Vincent 
stopped short in the languid answer he was 
making to his respectable interlocutor with 
a sudden start and access of impatience. 
The brilliant room had suddenly clouded 
over. She had joined her guests outside. 
With bitterness, and a sharp pang at his 
heart, Vincent looked round and wondered 


133 

to find himself in the house, in the company, 
from which she had gone. What business 
had he there ? No link of connection ex- 
isted between him and this little world of 
unknown people except herself. She had 
brought him here ; she alone knew even so 
much of him as his name. He had not an 
inch of ground to stand on in the little alien 
assembly ivhen she was not there. He broke 
off his conversation with his unknown sym- 
pathizer abruptly, and rushed out, meaning 
tc .eave the place. But somehow, fascinated 
still, in a hundred different moods a minute, 
when he got outside, he too lingered about 
the paths, where he continually met with 
groups and stray couples who stared at him, 
and wondered again, sometimes not inaudi- 
bly, who he was. He met her at last under 
the shadow of the lime-trees with a train of 
girls about her, and a following of eager 
male attendants. When he came forward 
lonely to make his farewell, with a look in 
which he meant to unite a certain indigna- 
tion and reproach with still chivalrous devo- 
tion, the unconscious beauty met him with 
unabated sweetness, held out her hand as 
before, and smiled the most radiant of 
smiles. 

“ Are you going to leave us already ? ” 
she said, in a tone which half persuaded the 
unlucky youth to stay till the last moment, 
and swallow all his mortifications. “ So 
sorry you must go away so soon ! and I 
wanted to show you my pictures too. An- 
other time, I hope, we may have better for- 
tune. When you come to me again, you 
must really be at leisure, and have no other 
engagements. Good-by ! It was so kind of 
you to come, and I am so sorry you can’t 
stay*! ” 

In another minute the green door had 
opened and closed, the fairy vision w'as gone, 
and poor Vincent stood in Grange Lane be- 
tween the two blank lines of garden-wall, 
come back to the common daylight after a 
week’s vain wandering in the enchanted 
grounds, half stupefied, half maddened by 
the disappointment and downfall. Lie made 
a momentary pause at the door, gulped down 
the big indignant sigh that rose in his throat, 
and, with a quickened step, and a heightened 
color, retraced his steps along a road which 
no longer gleamed with any rosy reflections, 
but was harder, more real, more matter-of- 
fact than ever it had looked before. What 


134 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 

a fool he had been, to be led into such a false 


position ! — to be cheated of his peace, and 
seduced from his duty, and intoxicated into 
such absurdities of hope, all by the gleam of 
a bright eye, and the sound of a sweet voice ! 
He who had never known the weakness be- 
fore, to cover himself with ridicule, and com- 
promise his dignity so entirely for the sake 
of the first beautiful woman who smiled upon 
.him ! Poor Vincent ! He hurried to his 
rooms thrilling with projects, schemes, and 
sudden vindictive ambition. That fair crea-- 
ture should learn that the young Noncon- 
formist was worthy of her notice. Those 
self-engrossed simperers should yet be star- 
tled out of their follies by the new fame ris- 
ing up amongst them. Who was he, did 
they ask ? One day they should know.- 
That the young man should despise him- 


self for this outbreak of injured feeling, asy, 
soon as he had cooled down, was inevitable : 
but it took some considerable time to cool 
down ; and in the mean time his resolution 
rose and swelled into that heroic region 
which, youth always attains so easily. He 
thought himself disenchanted forever. That 
night, in bitter earnest, he burned the mid- 
night oil — that night his pen flew over the 
paper with outbreaks, sometimes indignant, 
sometimes pathetic, on subjects as remote 
as possible from Lady Western’s breakfast- 
party ; and with a sudden Vevulsion he be- 
thought himself of Salem and its oligarchy, 
which just now prophesied so much good of 
their new minister. He accepted Salem with 
all the heat of passion at that moment. His 
be the task to raise it and its pastor into a 
common fame ! 






r 




4 ^ 


■r::u 


\ 

'I 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


PART III. — CHAPTER VIII. 

The events above narrated were all prefa- 
tory of the great success accomplished by 
Mr. Vincent in Carlingford. Indeed, the date 
of the young minister’s fame — fame which, 
as everybody acquainted with that town must 
be aware, was widely diffused beyond Carling- 
ford itself, and even reached the metropolis, 
and gladdened his Alma Mater at Homerton 
— might almost be fixed by a reference to 
Lady Western’s housekeeping book, if she 
kept any, and the date of her last summer- 
party. That event tlirew the young Non- 
conformist into just the state of mind which 
was w'antcd to quicken all the prejudices 
of his education, and give individual force 
to all the hereditary limits of thought in 
which ho had been born. An attempt on 
the part of the Government to repeal the 
Toleration Act, or reinstate the Test, could 
scarcely have produced a more permanent 
and rapid effect than Lady Western’s neglect, 
and the total ignorance of Mr. Vincent dis- 
played by polite society in Carlingford. No 
shame to him. It was precisely the same 
thing in private life which the other would 
have been in public. Repeal of the Toleration 
Act, or re-enactment of the Test, are things 
totally impossible j and when persecution is 
not to be apprehended or hoped for, where 
but in the wrongs of a privileged class can 
the truest zest of dissidence bo found ? Mr. 
Vincent, who had received his dissenting prin- 
ciples as matters of doctrine, took up the fa- 
miliar instruments now with a rush of private 
feeling. He was not conscious of the power of 
that sentiment of inj ury and indignation which 
possessed him. Ho believed in his heart 
that he was but returning, after a temporary 
hallucination, to the true duties of his post j 
but the fact was, that this wound in the ten- 
derest point — this general slight and indiffer- 
ence — pricked him forward in all that force 
of personal complaint which gives warmth 
and piquancy to a public grievance. The 
young man said nothing of Lady Western 
even to his dearest friend — tried not to think 
of her except by way of imagining how she 
should one day hear of him, and know his 
name when it possessed a distinction which 
neither the perpetual curate of St. Roque’s, 
nor any other figure in that local world, dared 
hope for. But with fiery zeal he flew to the 
question of Church and State, and set forth 
tlie wrongs which Christianity sustained from 


135 

endowment, and the heinous evils of rich liv- 
ings, episcopal palaces, and spiritual lords. 
It was no mean or ungenerous argument 
which the young Nonconformist pursued in 
his fervor of youth and wounded self-regard. 
It was the natural cry of a man who had en- 
tered life at disadvantage, and chafed, with- 
out knowing it, at all the phalanx of orders 
and classes above him, standing close in or- 
der to prevent his entrance. With eloquent 
fervor he expatiated upon the kingdom that 
was not of this world. If these words were 
true, what had the Church to do with worldly 
possessions, rank, dignities, power? Was 
his Grace of Lambeth more like Paul the 
tentmaker than his Holiness of Rome ? Mr. 
Vincent went into the whole matter with gen- 
uine conviction, and confidence in his own 
statements. He believed and had been 
trained in it. In his heart he was persuaded 
that he himself, oft disgusted and much mis- 
understood in his elected place at Salem 
Chapel, ministered the gospel more closely 
to his Master’s appointment than the rector 
of Carlingford, who was nominated by a col- 
lege, or the curate of St. Roque’s, who had 
his forty pounds a-year from a tiny ancient 
endowment, and was spending his own little 
fortune on his church and district. These 
men had joined God and mammon — they 
were in the pay of the State. Mr. Vincent 
thundered forth the lofty censures of an evan- 
gelist whom the State did not recognize, and 
with whom mammon had little enough to do. 
He brought forth all the weapons out of the 
Homerton armory, new, bright, and dazzling ; 
and he did not know any more than his au- 
dience that he never would have wielded them 
so heartily — perhaps would scarcely have 
taken them off the wall — but for the sudden 
sting with which his own inferior place, and 
the existence of a privileged class doubly 
shut against his entrance, had quickened his 
personal consciousness. Such, however, was 
the stimulus which woke the minister of Sa- 
lem Chapel into action, and produced that 
series of lectures on Church and State which,, 
as everybody knows, shook society in Car- 
lingford to its very foundation. 

“Now we’ve got a young man as is a credit 
to us,” said Tozer ; “ and now he’s warming 
to his work, as I was a little afraid of at first j 
for somehow I can’t say as I could see to my 
satisfaction, when he first come, that his 
heart was in it, — I say, now as we’ve got a 


136 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


pastor as does us credit, I am not the man 
to consider a bit of expense. My opinion is 
as we should take the Music Hall for them 
lectures. There’s folks might go to the Mu- 
sic Hall as would never come to Salem, and 
we’re responsible for our advantages. A 
clever young man like Mr. Vincent aint to 
be named along with Mr. Tufton ; we’re the 
teachers of the community, that’s what we 
are. I am for being public-spirited — I always 
was ; and I don’t mind standing my share. 
My opinion is as we should take the Music 
Hall.” 

“ If we was charging sixpence a-head or 
so ” said prudent Pigeon, the poulterer. 

“ That’s w'hat I’ll never give my consent 
to — never ! ” said Tozer. “ If we was amusin’ 
the people, we might charge sixpence a-head ; 
but mark my words,” continued the butter- 
man, “ there aint twenty men in Carlingford, 
nor in no other place, as would give sixpence 
to have their minds enlightened. No, sir, 
we’re conferring of a boon j and let’s do it 
handsomely, I say — let’s do it handsomely ; 
and here’s my name down for five pound to 
clear Expenses : and if every man in Salem 
does as well, there aint no reason for hesi- 
tating. I’m a plain man, but I don’t make 
no account of a little bit of money when a 
principle’s at stake.” 

This statement was conclusive. When it 
came to the sacrifice of a little bit of money, 
neither Mrs. Pigeon nor Mrs. Brown could 
have endured life had their husbands yielded 
the palm to Tozer. And the Music Hall was 
accordingly taken ; and there, every W ednes- 
day for six weeks the young Nonconformist 
mounted his cheval de hataille, and broke his 
impetuous spear against the Church. Per- 
haps Carlingford was in want of a sensation 
at the moment ; and the town was virgin 
soil, and had never yet been invaded by sight 
or sound of heresy. Anyhow, the fact was, 
that this fresh new voice attracted the ear of 
the public. That personal impetuosity and 
sense of wrong which gave fire to the. dis- 
course, roused the interest of the entire com- 
munity. Mr. Vincent’s lectures became the 
fashion in Carlingford, where nobody in the 
higher levels of society had ever heard be- 
fore of the amazing evils of a Church Estab- 
ment. Some of the weaker or more candid 
minds among the audience were even upset 
by the young minister’s arguments. Two or 
three young people of both sexes declared 


themselves converted, and were persecuted 
to their heart’s desire when they intimated 
their intention of henceforward joining the 
congregation at Salem. The two Misses 
Hemmings were thrown into a state of great 
distress and perplexity, and wrung their 
hands, and looked at each other, as each new 
enormity was brought forth. A very ani- 
mated interested audience filled the benches 
in the Music Hall for the three last lectures. 
It was Mr. Tozer’s conviction, whispered in 
confidence to all the functionaries at Salem, 
that the rector himself, in a muffler and blue 
spectacles, listened in a corner to the voice 
of rebellion ; but no proof of this monstrous 
supposition ever came before the public. 
Notwithstanding, the excitement was evi- 
dent. Miss Wodehouse took tremulous 
notes, her fingers quivering with anger, with 
the intention of calling upon Mr. Wentworth 
to answer and deny these assertions. Dr. 
Marjoribanks, the old Scotchman, who in his 
heart enjoyed a hit at the Episcopate, cried 
“ Hear, hear ” with his sturdy northern prat- 
tling through the hall, and clapped his large 
brown hands, with a broad grin at his daugh- 
ter, who was “ high,” and one of Mr. Went- 
worth’s sisters of mercy. But poor little 
Hose Lake, the drawing-master’s daughter, 
who was going up for confirmation next time 
the bishop came to Carlingford, turned very 
pale under Mr. Vincent’s teaching. All the 
different phases of conviction appeared in 
her eager little face — first indignation, then 
doubt, lastly horror and intense determina- 
tion to flee out from Babylon. Her father 
laughed, and told her to attend to her needle- 
work, when Hose confided to him her troubles. 
Her needlework ! She who had just heard 
that the Church was rotten, and tottering on 
its foundations; that it was choked with 
filthy lucre and State support ; that Church 
to which she had been about to give in her 
personal adhesion. Hose put away her cat- 
echism and confirmation good-books, and 
crossed to the other side of the street that 
she might not pass Masters’, that emporium 
of evil. She looked wistfully after the young 
Nonconformist as he passed her on the streets, 
wondering what high martyr-thoughts must 
be in the apostolic mind which entertained 
so high a'contempt for all the honors and 
distinctions of this world. Meanwhile Mr. 
Vincent pursued his own way, entirely con- 
vinced, as was natural for a young man, that 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


137 


he was “ doing a great work ” in Carlingford. 
He was still in that stage of life when peo- 
ple imagine that you have only to state the 
truth clearly to have it believed, and that to 
convince a man of right and wrong is all that 
is necessary to his immediate reformation. 
But it was not with any very distinct hopes 
or wishes of emptying the church in Carling- 
ford, and crowding Salem Chapel, that the 
young man proceeded. Such expectations, 
high visions of a day to come when not a sit- 
ting could be had in Salem for love or money, 
did indeed glance into the souls of Tozer and 
his brother deacons ; but the minister did 
but stand up and deliver his blow at the 
world — his outcry against things in general 
— his warm youthful assertion that he too 
had a right to all the joys and privileges of 
humanity, — as, by means of sermons, lec- 
tures, poems, or what not, youth and pov- 
erty, wherever they have a chance, do pro- 
claim their protest against the world. 

On the last night of the lectures, just as 
Vincent had taken his place upon his plat- 
form, a rustle, as of some one of importance 
entering, thrilled the audience. Looking 
over the sea of heads before him, the breath 
almost left the young minister’s lips when 
he saw the young Dowager, in all the glory- 
of full-dress, threading her way through the 
crowd, which opened to let her pass. Mr. 
Vincent stood watching her progress, un- j 
aware that it was time for him to begin, and I 
that his hearers, less absorbed than Ke, were j 
asking each other what it was which had so ■ 
suddenly paled his face and checked his ut- i 
terance. He watched Lady Western and 
her companion come slowly forward ; he saw 
Tozer, in a delighted bustle, leading the way 
to one of the raised seats of the orchestra 
close to the platform. When they were 
seated, and not till then, the lecturer, draw- 
ing a long gasping breath, turned to his au- 
dience. But the crowd was hazy to his 
eyes. He began, half mechanically, to speak 
— then made a sudden pause, his mind oc- 
cupied with other things. On the very skirts 
of the crow'd, far back at the door, stood his 
friend of Back Grove Street. In that mo- 
mentary pause, he saw her standing alone, 
with the air of a person who had risen up 
unconsciously in sudden surprise and con- 
sternation. Her pale dark face looked not 
less confused and startled than Vincent him- 
self was conscious of looking, and her eyes 


were turned in the same direction as his had 
been the previous moment. The crowd of 
Carlingford hearers died off from the scene 
for the instant, so far as the young Noncon- 
formist was concerned. He knew but of 
that fair creature in all her sw'eet bloom and 
blush of beauty — the man who accompanied 
her — Mrs. Hilyard, a thin, dark, eager 
shadow in the distance — and himself stand- 
ing, as it were, between them, connecting 
all together. What could that visionary 
link be which distinguished and separated 
these four, so unlike each other, from all the 
rest of the world ? But Mr. Vincent had no 
leisure to follow out the question, even had 
[his mind been sufficiently clear to do it. 
i He saw the pale woman at the end of the 
hall suddenly drop into her seat, and draw 
a thick black veil over her face ; and the 
confused murmur of impatience in the crowd 
I before him roused the young man to his own 
I position. He opened the eyes which had 
j been hazing over with clouds of imagination 
and excitement. He delivered his lecture. 
Though he never was himself aware what he 
i had said, it was received with just as much 
attention and applause as usual. He got 
through it somehow ; and, sitting down at 
last, with parched lips and a helpless feeling 
i of excitement, watched the audience dispers- 
ing as if they were so many enemies from 
whom he had escaped. Who was this man 
with Her ? Why did She come to bewilder 
him in the midst of his work ? It did not 
occur to the poor young fellow that Lady 
Western came to his lecture simply as to a 
“ distraction.” He thought she had a pur- 
pose in it. He pretended not to look as she 
descended daintily from her scat in the or- 
chestra, drawing her white cloak with a 
pretty shiver over her white shoulders. He 
pretended to start when her voice sounded 
in his expectant ear, 

“ Oh, Mr. Vincent, how very clever and 
wicked of you! ” cried Lady Western. “ I 
am so horrified, and charmed. To think of 
you attacking the poor dear old Church that 
we all ought to support through everything ! 
And I am such a stanch churchwoman, and 
so shocked to hear all this ; but you wont do 
it any more.” 

Saying this. Lady Western leaned her 
beautiful hand upon Mr. Vincent’s table, 
and looked in his face with a beseeching in- 
sinuating smile. The poor minister did all 


138 

he could to preserve his virtue, 
aside at Lady Western’s companion to for- 
tify himself, and escape the enervating influ- 
ence of that smile. 

“ I cannot pretend to yield the matter to 
your ladyship,” said Vincent, “ for it had 
been previously arranged that this was to bq 
the last of my lectures at present. I am 
sorry it did not please you.” 

“ But it did please me,” said the young 
Dowager ; “ only that it was so very wicked 
and wrong. Where did you learn such 
dreadful sentiments ? I am so sorry I shan’t 
hear you again, and so glad you are finished. 
You never came to see me after my little 
f^te. I am afraid you thought us stupid. 
Good-night: but you really must come to 
me, and I shall convert you. I am sure you 
never can have looked at the Church in the 
right way : why, what would become of us 
if we were all Dissenters ? What a fright- 
ful idea ! Thank you for such a charming 
evening. Good-night.” 

And Lady Western held out that treas- 
ured splendor, her hand,” to the bewildered 
Nonconformist, who only dared touch it, and 
let it fall, drawing back from the smile with 
which the syren beguiled him back again 
into her toils. But Mr. Vincent turned 
round hastily as he heard a muttered excla- 
mation, “ By Jove ! ” behind him, and fixed 
the gaze of angry and instinctive repugnance 
upon the tail figure which brushed past. 
“ Make haste, Alice — do you mean to stay 
here all night ? ” said this wrathful individ- 
ual, fixing his eyes with a defiant stare upon 
the minister ; and he drew the beauty’s arm 
almost roughly into his own, and hurried her 
away, evidently remonstrating in the freest 
and boldest manner upon her civility. “ By 
Jove ! the fellow will think you are in love 
with him,” Vincent, with his quickened and 
suspicious ears, could hqar the stranger say, 
with that delightful indifference to being 
overheard which characterizes some Eng- 
lishmen of the exalted classes ; and the 
strain of reproof evidently continued as they 
made their way to the door. Vincent, for 
his part, when he had watched them out of 
sight, dropped into his chair, and sat there 
in the empty hall, looking over the vacant 
benches with the strangest mixture of feel- 
ings. Was it possible that his eager fervor 
and revolutionary warmth were diminished 
by these few words and that smile — that 


the wrongs of Church and State looked less 
grievous all at once, and that it was an effort 
to return to the lofty state of feeling with 
which he had entered the place two hours 
ago ? As he sat there in his reverie of dis- 
comfiture, he could see Tozer, a single black 
figure, come slowly up the hall, an emissary 
from the group at the door of “ chapel peo- 
ple,” who had been enjoying the defeat of 
the enemy, and were now waiting for the 
conqueror. “ Mr. Vincent,” shouted Tozer, 
“ shall we turn off the gas, and leave you to 
think it all over till the morning, sir? 
They’re all as pleased as Punch and as curi- 
ous as women down below here, and my 
Phoebe will have it you’re tired. I must 
say as it is peculiar to see you a-sitting up 
there all by yourself, and the lights going 
out, and not another soul in the place,” 
added the butterman, looking round with a 
sober grin ; and in reality the lights dimin- 
ished every moment as Mr. Vincent rose 
and stumbled down from his platform into 
the great empty hall with its skeleton 
benches. If they had left him there till the 
morning, it would have been a blessed ex- 
change from that walk home with the paVty, 
that invitation to supper, and all the ap- 
plauses and inquiries that followed. They 
had the Pigeons to supper that night at the 
butter-shop, and the whole matter was dis- 
cussed in all its bearings — the flutter of the 
“ church folks,” the new sittings let during 
the week, the triumphant conviction of the 
two deacons that Salem would soon be over- 
flowing. 

“ Oh, why were ‘ deacons ’ made so coarse, 

Or parsons made so fine 'i ” 

Mr. Vincent did not bethink himself of 
that touching ditty. He could not see the 
serio-comic lights in which the whole busi- 
ness abounded. It was all the saddest ear- 
nest to tho young pastor, who found so little 
encouragement or support even in the en- 
thusiasm of his flock. 

“ And, oh, Mr. Vincent,” said the engag- 
ing Phoebe, in a half-whisper aside, “ how 
did you come to be so friendly with Lady 
Western ? How she did listen, to be sure ! 
and smiled at you so sweetly. Ah, I don’t 
wonder now that you can’t see anything in 
the Carlingford young ladies ; but do tell 
us, please, how you came to know her so 
well ? ” 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD 
He looked 


SALEM CHAPEL. 139 


Insensibly to himself, a gleam of gratifica- 
tion lighted up Mr. Vincent’s face. He was 
gracious to Phoebe. “ I can’t pretend to 
know her zoeZZ,” he said, with a little mock 
humility; whereupon the matrons of the 
party took up their weapons immediately. 

“ And all the better, Mr. Vincent — all the 
better ! ” cried Mrs. Tozer ; “ she didn’t 
come there for no good, you may be sure. 
Them great ladies, when they’re pretty-look- 
ing, as I don’t deny she’s pretty-looking — ” 

“ Oh, mamma, beautiful ! ” exclaimed 
Phoebe. 

“ When they’re pretty-looking, as I say,” 
continued Mrs. Tozer, “ they’re no better 
nor evil spirits — that’s what I tell you, 
Phoebe. They’ll go out o’ their way, they 
will, for to lay hold on a poor silly young 
man (which was not meaning you, Mr. Vin- 
cent, that knows better, being a minister), 
and when they’ve got him fast, they’ll laugh 
at him — that’s their sport. A minister of 
our connection as was well acquainted among 
them sort of folks would be out o’ nature. 
My boy shall never make no such acquaint- 
ances as long as I’m here.” 

“ I saw her a-speaking to the minister,” 
said Mrs. Pigeon, “ and the thought crossed 
my mind as it wasn’t just what I expected 
of Mr. Vincent. Painted ladies that come 
out of a night with low necks and flowers in 
their hair, to have all Carlingford a-staring 
at them, ain’t fit company for a good pastor. 
Themes not the lambs of the flock — not so 
far as I understand ; they’re not friends as 
Salem folks would approve of, Mr. Vincent. 
I’m always known for a plain speaker, and I 
don’t deceive you. It’s a deal better to draw 
back in time.” 

“ I have not the least reason to believe 
that Lady Western means to honor me with 
her friendship,” said Vincent, haughtily — 
“so it is premature to discuss the matter. 
As I feel rather tired, perhaps you’ll excuse 
me to-night. Come over to my rooms, Mr. 
Tozer, to-morrow, if you can spare a little 
time, and we will discuss our business there. 
I hope Mrs. Tozer will pardon me withdraw- 
' ing so early, but I am not very well — rather 
tired— out of sorts a little to-night.” 

So saying, the young pastor extricated 
K himself from the table, shook hands, regard- 
less of all remonstrances, and made his way 
out with some difficulty from the little room, 
which was choke-full, and scarcely permitted 


egress. When he was gone, the three ladies 
looked at each other in dumb amazement. 
Phoebe, who felt herself aggrieved, was the 
first to break silence. 

“ Ma and Mrs. Pigeon,” cried the aggra- 
vated girl, “ you’ve been and hurt his feel- 
ings. I knew you would. He’s gone home 
angry and disappointed ; he thinks none of 
us understand him ; lie thinks we’re trying 
to humble him and keep him down, when, to 
tell the truth — 

Here Phoebe burst into tears. 

“ Upon my word,” said Mrs. Pigeon, 
“ dear, deary me ! It’s just what I said 
whenever I knew you had made up your 
minds to a young minister. He’ll come 
a-dangling after our girls, says I, and a-tri- 
fling with their affections. Bless my heart, 
Phoebe ! if it had been my Maria now that’s 
always a-crying about something — but you! 
Don’t take on, dear — fretting’s no good^it’ll 
spoil your color and take away your appe- 
tite, and that ain’t the way to mend matters : 
and to think of his lifting his eyes to my 
Lady Dowager ! Upon my word ! but there 
ain’t no accounting for young men’s ways no 
more than for girls — and being a minister 
don’t make a bit of difference, so far as I can 
see.” 

“ Why, what’s the matter ? ” cried Tozer : 
“ the pastor’s gone off in a huff, and Phoebe 
crying. What’s wrong ? You’ve been say- 
ing somethin’ — you women with your sharp 
tongues.” 

“ It’s Phoebe and Mr. Vincent have had 
some words. Be quiet, Tozer — don’t you 
see the child’s hurt in her feelings ? ” said 
his wife. 

Mr. and Mrs. Pigeon exchanged looks. 
“ I’ll tell you what it is,” said the latter lady, 
solemnly. “ It’s turned his head. I never 
approved of the Music Hall myself. It’s a 
deal of money to throw away, and it’s not 
like as if it was mercy to poor souls. And 
such a crush, and the cheering, and my Lady 
Western to shake hands with him, has turned 
the minister’s head. Now, just you mark 
my words. He hasn’t been here.five month 
yet, and he’s a-getting high already. You 
men’ll have your own adoes with him. 
Afore a year’s over our heads, he’ll be a deal 
too high for Salem. His head’s turned — 
that’s what it is.” 

“ Oh, Mrs. Pigeon, how unkind of you ! ” 
cried Phoebe, “ when he’s as good as good — 


140 CHRONICLES O 

and not a bit proud, nor ever was — and al- 
ways such a gentleman ! — and never neglects 
the very poorest whenever he’s sent for — oh, 
it’s so unkind of you.” 

“I can’t see as his head isn’t straight 
enough on his shoulders,” said Tozer him- 
self, with authority. “ He’s tired, that’s what 
it is — and excited a bit, I shouldn’t wonder ; 
a man can’t study like he does, and make 
hisself agreeable at the same time — no, no 
. — ^by a year’s time he’ll be settling down, 
and we’ll know where we are ; and as for 
Salem and our connection, they never had a 
chance, I can tell you, like what they’re 
a-going to have now.” 

But Mrs. Pigeon shook her head. It -was 
the first cloud that had risen on the firma- 
ment of Salem Chapel, so far as Mr. Vincent 
was concerned. 

CHAPTER IX. 

It was a January night on which Vincent 
emerged abruptly from Tozer’s door, the 
evening of that lecture — a winter night, not 
very cold, but very dark, the skies looking 
not blue, but black overhead, and the light 
of the lamps gleaming dismally on the pave- 
ment, which had received a certain squalid 
power of reflection from the recent rain ; for 
a sharp, sudden shower had fallen while Vin- 
cent had been seated at the hospitable table 
of the butterman, which had chased every- 
body from the darkling streets. All the 
shops were closed, a policeman marched 
along with heavy tread, and the "wet pave- 
ment glimmered round his solitary figure. 
Nothing more uncomfortable could be sup- 
posed after the warmth and light of a snug 
interior, however humble ; and the minister 
turned his face hastily in the direction of his 
lodging. But the next moment he turned 
back again, and looked wistfully in the other 
direction. It was not to gaze along the dark 
length of street to where the garden-walls 
of Grange Lane, undiscernible in the dark- 
ness, added a far-withdrawing perspective of 
gentility and aristocratic seclusion to the 
vulgar pretensions of George Street ; it was 
to look at a female figure which came slowly 
up, dimming out the reflection on the wet 
stones as it crossed one streak of lamplight 
after another. Vincent was excited and cu- 
rious, and had enough in his own mind to 
make him wistful for sympathy, if it were to 
be had from any understanding heart. He 


F CARLINGFORB. 

recognized Mrs. Hilyard instinctively as she 
came forward, not conscious of hiirt, walk- 
ing, strange woman as she was, with the air 
of a person walking by choice at that mel- 
ancholy hour in that dismal night. She was 
evidently not going anywhere ; her step was 
firm and distinct, like the step of a person 
thoroughly self-possessed and afraid of noth- 
ing — but it lingered with a certain meditative 
sound in the steady firm footfall. Vincent 
felt a kind of conviction that she had come 
out here to think over some problem of that 
mysterious life into which he could not pen- 
etrate, and he connected this strange walk 
involuntarily with the appearance of Lady 
Western and her careless companion. To 
his roused fancy, some incomprehensible link 
existed between himself and the equally in- 
comprehensible woman before him. He 
turned back almost in spite of himself, and 
went to meet her. Mrs. Hilyard looked up 
when she heard his step. She recognized 
him also on the spot. They approached each 
other much as if they had arranged a meet- 
ing at eleven o’clock of that wet January 
night in the gleaming, deserted streets. 

“ It is you, Mr. Vincent ! ” she said. “ I 
wonder why I happen to meet you, of all 
persons in the world, to-night. It is very 
odd. What, I wonder, can have brought us 
both together at such an hour and in such a 
place? You never came to see me that 
Monday— nor any Monday. You went to 
see my beauty instead, and you were so lucky 
as to be affronted with the syren at the first 
glance. Had you been less fortunate, I 
think I might have partly taken you into 
my confidence to-night.” 

“ Perhaps I am less fortunate, if that is 
all that hinders,” said Vincent ; “ but it is 
strange to see you out here so late in such 
a dismal night. Let me go with you, and 
see you safe home.” 

“Thank you. I am perfectly safe — no- 
body can possibly be safer than such a 
woman as I am, in poverty and middle age,” 
said his strange acquaintance. “ It is an 
immunity that women don’t often prize, Mr. 
Vincent, but it is very valuable in its way. 
If anybody saw you taking to an equivocal 
female figure at eleven o’clock in George 
Street, think what the butterman would 
say ; but a single glimpse of my face would 
explain matters better than a volume. I am 
going down towards Grange Lane, princi- 


SALEM CHAPEL 


pally because I am restless to-night, and 
don’t know what to do with myself. I shall 
tell you what I thought of your lecture if you 
will walk with me to the end of the street.” 

“ Ah, my lecture ? — never mind,” said the 
hapless young minister ; “ I forget all about 
that. What is it that brings you here, and 
me to your side? — what is there in that 
dark-veiled house yonder that draws your 
steps and mine to it ? It is not accidental, 
our meeting here.” 

“You are talking romance and nonsense, 
quite inconceivable in a man who has just 
come from the society of deacons,” said 
Mrs. Hilyard, glancing up at him with that 
habitual gleam of her eyes. “We have met, 
my dear Mr. Vincent, because, after refresh- 
ing my mind with your lecture, I thought of 
refreshing my body by a walk this fresh 
night. One saves candles, you know, when 
one does one’s exercise at night : whereas 
walking by day one wastes everything — 
time, tissue, daylight, invaluable treasures : 
the only light that hurts nobody’s eyes, and 
costs nobody money, is the light of day. 
That illustration of yours about the clouds 
and the sun was very pretty. I assure you 
I thought the whole exceedingly effective. I 
should not wonder if it made a revolution 
in Oarlingford.” 

“Why do you speak to me so ? I know 
you did not go to listen to my lecture,” said 
the young minister, to whom sundry gleams 
of enlightenment had come, since his last in- 
terview with the poor needlewoman of Back 
Grove Street. 

“ Ah ! how can you tell that ? ” she said, 
sharply, looking at him in the streak of 
lamplight. “ But to tell ,the truth,” she con- 
tinued, “ I did actually go to hear you, and 
to look at other people’s faces, just to see 
whether the world at large— so far as that 
exists in Oarlingford — was like what it used 
to be ; and if I confess I saw something there 
more interesting than the lecture, I say no 
more than the lecturer could agree in, Mr. 
Vincent. You, too, saw something that 
made you forget i^he vexed question of 
Church and State. 

“ Tell me,” said Vincent, with an earnest- 
ness he was himself surprised at, “ who was 
that man ? ” 

His companion started as if she had re- 
ceived a blow, turned round upon him with 
a glance in her dark eyes such as he had 


141 

never seen there before, and in a sudden 
momentary passion drew her breath hard, 
and stopped short on the way. But the 
spark of intense and passionate emotion 
was as shortlived as it was vivid. “ I do not 
suppose he is anything to interest you,” she 
answered the next moment, with a move- 
ment of her thin mouth, letting the hands 
that she had clasped together drop to her 
side. “ Nay, make yourself quite easy ; he^ 
is not a lover of my lady’s. He is only a 
near relation — and,” she continued, linger- 
ing on the words with a force of subdued 
scorn and rage, which Vincent dimly appre- 
hended, but could not understand, “ a very 
fascinating fine gentleman — a man who can 
twist a woman round his fingers when he 
likes, and break all her heartstrings— if she 
has any — so daintily afterwards, that it would 
be a pleasure to see him do it. Ah, a won- 
derful man ! ” 

“You know him then ? I saw you knew 
him,” said the young man, surprised and 
disturbed, thrusting the first commonplace 
words he could think of into the silence, 
which seemed to tingle with the restrained 
meaning of this brief speech. 

“ I don’t think we are lucky in choosing 
our subjects to-night,” said the strange 
woman. “ How about the ladies in Lons- 
dale, Mr. Vincent? They don’t keep a 
school ? lam glad they don’t keep a school. 
Teaching, you know, unless when one has a 
vocation for it, as you had a few weeks ago, 
is uphill work. I am sorry to see you are 
not so sure about your work as you were 
then. Your sister is pretty, I suppose ? and 
does your mother take great care of her, and 
keep her out of harm’s way ? Lambs have 
a silly faculty of running directly in the 
wolf’s road. Why don’t you take a holiday 
and go to see them, or have them here to 
live with you ? ” 

“You know something about them,” said 
Vincent, alarmed. “ What has happened ? 

^tell me. It will be the greatest kindness 

to say it out at once.” 

“ Hush,” said Mrs. Hilyard ; “ now you 
are absurd. I speak out of my own thoughts, 
as most people do, and you, like all young 
people, make personal applications. How 
can I possibly know about them ? lam not 
a fanciful woman, but there are some things 
that wake one’s imagination. In such a dark 
I night as this, with such wet gleams aboul 


142 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


the streets, when I think of people at a dis- 
tance, I always think of something un- 
comfortable happening. Misfortune seems 
to lie in wait about those black corners. I 
think of women wandering along dismal sol- 
itary roads with babies in their shameful 
arms — and of dreadful messengers of evil 
approaching unconscious houses, and look- 
ing in at peaceful windows upon the com- 
fort they are about to destroy ; and I think,” 
she continued, crossing the road so rapidly 
(they were now opposite Lady Western’s 
house) that Vincent, who had not anticipated 
the movement, had to quicken his pace sud- 
denly to keep up with her, “ of evil. creatures 
pondering in the dark vile schemes against 

the innocent ” Here she broke off all at 

once, and looking up in Vincent’s face with 
that gleam of secret mockery in her eyes 
and movement of her mouth to which he was 
accustomed, added, suddenly changing her 
tone, Or of fine gentlemen, Mr. Vincent, 
profoundly bored with their own society, 
promenading in a dreary garden and smok- 
ing a disconsolate cigar. Look there ! ” 

The young minister, much startled and 
rather nervous, mechanically looked, as she 
bade him, through the little grated loophole 
in Lady Western’s garden-door. He saw 
the lights shining in the windows, and a red 
spark moving about before the house, as, 
with a little shame for his undignified posi- 
tion, he withdrew his eyes from that point 
of vantage. But Mrs. Hilyard was moved 
by no such sentiment. She planted herself 
opposite the door, and, bending her head to 
the little grating, gazed long and steadfastly. 
In the deep silence of the night, standing 
with some uneasiness at her side, and not 
insensible to the fact that his position, if he 
were seen by anybody who knew him, would 
be rather absurd and slightly equivocal, Vin- 
cent heard the footsteps of the man inside, 
the fragrance of whose cigar faintly pene- 
trated the damp air. The stranger was 
evidently walldng up and down before the 
iiouse in enjoyment of that luxury which 
the feminine arrangments of the young 
Dowager’s household would not permit in- 
doors; but the steady eagerness with which' 
this strange woman gazed — the way in which 
she had managed to interweave Mrs. Vin- 
cent and pretty Susan at Lonsdale into the 
conversation — the suggestions of coming 
danger and evil with which her words had 


invested the very night, all heightened by 
the instinctive repugnance and alarm of 
which the young man had himself been con- 
scious whenever he met the eye of Lady 
Western’s companion — filled him with dis- 
comfort and dread. His mind, which had 
been lately too much occupied in his own 
concerns to think much of Susan, reverted^ 
now with sudden uneasiness to his mother’s 
cottage, from wliich Susan’s betrothed had 
lately departed to arrange matters for their 
speedy marriage. But how Lady Western’s 
“ near relation ” — this man whom Mrs. Hil- 
yard watched with an intense regard which 
looked like hatred, but might be dead love — 
could be connected with Lonsdale, or Susan, 
or himself, or the poor needlewoman in Back 
Grove Street, Vincent could not form the 
remotest idea. He stood growing more and 
more impatient by that dark closed door, 
which had once looked a gate of paradise— 
which, he felt in his heart, half a dozen words 
or a single smile could any day make again 
a gate of the paradise of fools to his bewil- 
dered feet — the steps of the unseen stranger 
within, and the quick breath of agitation 
from the w^atcher by his side, being the only 
sounds audible in the silence of the night. 
At last some restless movement he made 
disturbed Mrs. Hilyard in her watch. -She 
left the door noiselessly and rapidly, and 
turned to recross the wet road. Vincent ac- 
companied her without saying a word. The 
two walked along together half the length of 
Grange Lane without breaking silence, with- ' 
out even looking at each other, till they 
came to the large placid white lamp at Dr. 
Marjoribanks’ gate, which cleared a little 
oasis of light out of the heart of the gloom. 
There she looked up at him with a face full 
of agitated life and motion — kindled eyes, 
elevated head, nostril and lips swelling with 
feelings which were totally undecipherable 
to Vincent; her whole aspect changed by an 
indescribable inspiration which awoke rem- 
nants of what might have been beauty in 
that thin, dark, middle-aged face. 

“ You are surprised at me and my curios- 
ity,” she said, “ and indeed you l^ave good 
reason ; but it is astonishing, when one is 
shut up in one’s self and knows nobody, how 
excited one gets over the sudden apparition 
of a person one has known in the other 
world. Some people die two or three times 

in a lifetime, Mr. Vincent. There is a real 

0 


SALEM CHAPEL 


transmigration of souls, or bodies, or both 
if you please. This is my third life I am 
going through at present. I knew that man, 
as I was saying, in the other world.” 

“ The world does change strangely,” said 
Vincent, who could not tell what to say ; 
“ but you put it very strongly — more strongly 
than I ” 

“ More strongly than you can understand ; 
I know that very well,” said Mrs. Hilyard, 
“ but you perceive you are speaking to a 
woman who has died twice. Coming to life 
is a bitter process, but one gets over it. If 
you ever should have such a thing to go 
through with — and survive it,” she added, 
giving him a wistful glance, “ I should like 
to tell you my experiences. However, I 
hope better things. You are very well looked 
after at Salem Chapel, Mr. Vincent. I think 
of you sometimes when I look out of my 
window and see yonr tabernacle. It is not 
so pretty as Mr. Wentworth^s at St. Roque’s, 
but you have the advantage of the curate 
otherwise. So far as I can see, he never oc- 
cupies himself with anything higher than his 
prayer-book and his poor people. I doubt 
much whether he would ever dream of re- 
plying to what you told us to-night.” 

“ Probably he holds a Dissenting minister 
in too much contempt,” said Vincent, with 
an uncomfortable smile on his lips. 

“ Don’t sneer — never sneer — no gentle- 
man does,” said his companion. “ I like 
you, though you are only a Dissenting min- 
ister. You know me to be very poor, and 
you have seen me in very odd circumstances 
to-night; yet you walk home with me — I 
perceive you are steering towards Back 
Grove Street, Mr. Vincent— =-without an allu- 
sion which could make me feel myself an 
equivocal person, and just as if this was the 
most reasonable thing in the world which I 
have been doing to-night. Thank you. 
You are a paladin in some things, though in 
others only a Dissenting minister. If I 
were a fairy, the gift I would endow you 
with would be just that same unconcious- 
ness of your own disadvantages, which cour- 
tesy makes you show of mine.” 

“Indeed,” said Vincent, with natural 
gratification, “.it required no discrimination 
on my part to recognize at once that I was 
addressing- ” 

“ Hush ! you have never even insinuated 
that an explanation was necessary, which is 


143 

the very height and climax of fine manners,” 
said Mrs. Hilyard ; “ and I speak who am, 
or used to be, an authority in such matters. 
I don’t mean to give you any explanation 
either. Now, you must turn back and go 
home. Good-night. One thing I may tell 
you, however,” she continued, with a little 
warmth ; “ don’t mistake me. There is no 
reason in this world why you might not in- 
troduce me to the ladies in Lonsdale, if any 
accident brought it about that we should 
meet. I say this to make your mind easy 
about your penitent; and now, my good 
young father in the faith, good-night.” 

“ Let me see you to your door first,” said 
the wondering young man. 

“ No — no farther. Good-night,” she said, 
hastily, shaking hands, and leaving him. 
The parting was so sudden that it took Vin- 
cent a minute to stop short, under way and 
walking quickly as he was. AVhen she had 
made one or two rapid steps in advance, 
Mrs. Hilyard turned back, as if with a sud- 
den impulse. 

“ Do you know I have an uneasiness about 
these ladies in Lonsdale?” she said; “I 
know nothing whatever about them — not so 
much as their names ; but you are their nat- 
ural protector ; and it does not do for women 
to be as magnanimous and generous in the 
reception of strangers as you are. There ! 
don’t be alarmed. I told you I knew noth- 
ing. They may be as safe, and as middle- 
aged, and as ugly as I am ; instead of a 
guileless widow and a pretty little girl, they 
may be hardened old campaigners like ray- 
self ; but they come into my mind, I cannot 
tell why. Have them here to live beside 
you, and they will do you good.” 

“ My sister is about to be married,” said 
Vincent, more and more surprised, and look- 
ing very sharply into her face in the lamp- 
light, to see whether she really did not know 
anything more than she said. 

A certain expression of relief came over 
her face. “ Then all is well,” she said, with 
strange cordiality, and again held out hei> 
hand to him. Then they parted, and pur- 
sued their several ways through the perfectly 
silent and dimly lighted streets. Vincent 
walked home with the most singular agita- 
tion in his mind. Whether to give any 
weight to such vague but alarming sugges- 
tions — whether to act immediately upon the 
indefinite terror thus insinuated into his 


]^44 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 




thoughts— or to write, and wait till he heard 
whether any real danger existed — or to cast 
it from him altogether as a fantastic trick 
of the imagination, he could not tell.^ 
Eventful and exciting as the evening had 
been, he postponed the other matters to this. 
If anv danger threatened Susan, his simple 
mother could suffer with her, but was ill 
qualified to protect her: but what danger 
could threaten Susan ? He consoled him- 
self with the thought that these were not 
the days of abductions or violent love-making. 
To think of an innocent English girl in her 
mother’s house as threatened with mysteri- 
ous danger, such as might have surrounded 
a heroine of the last century, was impossi- 
ble. If there are Squire Thornhills now-a- 
days, their operations are of a different char- 
acter. Walking rapidly home, with now 
and then a blast of chill rain in his face, and 
■he lamplight gleaming in the wet streets, 
Ns^ent found less and less reason for at- 
Vin<^ any importance to Mrs. Hilyard’s 
taching:^ alarms. It was the sentiment of 
Innts an^ and her own thoughts, which had 
the nig}^ mind — a mind 

®^g&este experienced in paths more crooked 
evidently Vincent himself, much less 
than any j^^d ever known. When he 
simple Susie, he found his little fire burn- 
reached hon/ his room arranged with careful 
ing brightl]^ ■vvas his landlady’s appropriate 
nicety, wh^je manner of showing her appre- 
and^ sensjf the night’s lecture, and her devo- 
ciation the minister ; and, lastly, on the table 
tion tOgp fpQjjj that little house in Lonsdale, 
^ which such fanciful fears had gath- 
^*^d. Never was there a letter which 
^Creathed more of the peaceful security and 
/ tranquillity of home. Mrs. Vincent wrote 
to her Arthur in mingled rejoicing and ad- 
monition, curious and delighted to hear of 
his lectures, but not more anxious about his 
f^e and success than about his flannels 
and precautions .against wet feet; while 
Susan’s postscript — a half longer than the 
letter to which it was appended — furnished 
her affectionate brother with sundry details, 
totally incomprehensible to him, of her 
wedding preparations, and, more shyly, of 
her perfect girlish happiness. Vincent 
laughed aloud as he folded up that woman’s 
letter. No mysterious horror, no whispering 
doubtful gloom, surrounded that house from 
which the pure, full daylight atmosphere, 


untouched by any darkness, breathed fresh 
upon him out of these simple pages. Here, 
in this humble, virtuous world, were no mys- 
teries. It was a deliverance to a heart 
which had begun to falter. Wherever fate 
might be lingering in the wild darkness of 
that January night, it was not on the thres- 
hold of his mother’s house. 

CHAPTER X. 

On the next evening after this there was 
a tea-meeting in Salem Chapel. In the 
back premises behind the chapel were all 
needful accommodations for the provision 
of that popular refreshment— boilers, tea- 
urns, unlimited crockery and pewter. In 
fact, it was one of Mr. Tozer’s boasts, that 
owing to the liberality of the “ connection ” 
in Carlingford, Salem was fully equipped in 
this respect, and did not need to borrow so 
much as a spoon or teapot, a very important 
matter under the circumstances. This, how- 
ever, was the first tea-meeting which had 
taken place since that one at which Mr. 
Tufton’s purse had been presented to him, 
and the old pastor had taken leave of his 
flock. The young pastor, indeed, had set his 
face against tea-meetings. He was so far 
behind his age as to doubt their utility, and 
declared himself totally unqualified to pre- 
side over such assemblies ; but, in the heat 
of his recent disappointment, when, stung by 
other people’s neglect, he had taken up Sa- 
lem and all belonging to it into his bosom, 
a cruel use had been made of the young 
minister’s compliance. They had wrung a 
reluctant consent from him in that un- 
guarded moment, and the walls of Carling- 
ford had been for some days blazing with 
placards of the tea-meeting, at which the 
now famous (in Carlingford) lecturer on 
Church and State was to speak. Not Tozer, 
with all his eloquence, had been able to per- 
suade the pastor to preside ; but at least he 
was to appear, to take tea at that table ele- 
vated on the platform, where Phoebe Tozer, 
under the matronly care of Mrs. Brown (for 
it was necessary to divide these honors, and 
guard against jealousy), dispensed the fra- 
grant lymph, and to address the meeting. 
There had been thoughts of a grand cele- 
bration in the Music Hall to do more honor 
to the occasion ; but as that might ha^e neu- 
tralized the advantages of having all the 
needful utensils within themselves, conven- 


SALEM ' 

ience and economy carried the day, and the 
scene of these festivities, as of all the previ- 
ous festivities of Salem, was the large, low 
room underneath the chapel, once intended 
for a school, but never used, except on Sun- 
days, in that capacity. Thither for two or 
three days all the “ young ladies ” of the 
chapel had streamed to and fro, engaged in 
decorations. Some manufactured festoons 
of evergreen, some concocted pink and white 
roses in paper to embellish the same. The 
printed texts of the Sunday school were 
framed, and in some cases obliterated, in 
Christmas garlands. Christmas, indeed, was 
past, but there were still holly and red ber- 
, ries and green smooth laurel leaves. The 
Pigeon girls, Phoebe Tozer, Mrs. Brown’s 
niece from the country, and the other young 
people in Salem who were of sufficiently 
advanced position, enjoyed the preparations 
greatly — entering into them with even 
greater heartiness than Lucy Wodehouse 
exhibited in the adornment of St. Koque’s, 
and taking as much pleasure in the task as 
if they had been picturesque Italians adorn- 
ing the shrine of their favorite saint. Cat- 
terina and Francesca with their flower-gar- 
lands are figures worthy of any picture, and 
60 is Lucy Wodehouse under the chancel 
arch at St. Roque’s ; but how shall we ven- 
ture to ask anybody’s sympathy for Phoebe 
and Maria Pigeon as they put up their fes- 
toons round the four square walls of the low 
'schoolroom in preparation for the Salem 
tea-party? Nevertheless, it is a fact that 
the two last mentioned had very much the 
same intentions and sensations, and amid 
the coils of fresh ivy and laurel did not 
look amiss in their cheerful labor — a fact 
which, before the work was completed, had 
become perceptible to various individuals of 
the Carlingford public. But Mr. Vincent 
I was, on this point, as on several others, une- 
qual to the requirements of his position. 
When he he did glance in for a moment on 
the afternoon of the eventful day, it was in 
company with Tozer and the Rev. Mr. 
Raffles of Shoebury, who was to take the 
chair. Mr. Raffles was very popular in 
Carlingford, as everywhere. To secure him 
for a tea-meeting was to secure its success. 
He examined into all the preparations, tast^ 
the cake, pricked his fingers with the gar- 
lands, to the immense delight of the young 
ladies, and complimented them on their skill 
CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


CHAPEL. 145 

with beaming cheerfulness ; while the min- 
ister of Salem, on the contrary, stalked 
about by his side pale and pre-occupied, 
lyith difficulty keeping himself from that 
contempt of the actual things around to 
which youth is so often tempted. His mind 
wandered off to the companion of his last 
night’s walk — to the stranger pacing up 
and down that damp garden with inscruta- 
ble unknown thoughts— -to the beautiful 
creature within those lighted windows, so 
near and yet so overwhelmingly distant — as 
if somehow they had abstracted life and got 
it among themselves. Mr. Vincent had lit- 
tle patience for what he considered the mean 
details of existence nearer at hand. As soon 
as he could possibly manage it, he escaped, 
regarding with a certain hopeless disgust 
the appearance he had to make in the even- 
ing, and without finding a single civil thing 
to say to the fair decorators. “ My young 
brother looks sadly low and out of spirits,” 
said jolly Mr. Raffles. “ What do you 
mean by being so unkind to the minister. 
Miss Phoebe, eh ? ” Poor Phoebe blushed 
pinker than ever, while the rest laughed. It 
was pleasant to be supposed “ unkind” to 
the minister; and Phoebe resolved to do 
what she could to cheer him when she sat 
by his elbow at the platform table making 
tea for the visitors of the evening. 

The evening- came, and there was not a 
ticket to be had anywhere in Carlingford : 
the schoolroom, with its blazing gas, its 
festoons, and its mottoes, its tables groaning 
with dark complexioned plumcake and heavy 
buns, was crowded quite beyond its accom- 
modation, and the edifying sight might be 
seen of Tozer and his brother deacons, and 
indeed all who were sufficiently interested in 
the success of Salem to sacrifice themselves 
on its behalf, making an erratic but not un- 
substantial tea in corners, to make room for 
the crowd. And in the highest good humor 
was the crowd which surrounded all the nar- 
row tables. The urns were well filled, the 
cake abundant, the company in its best at- 
tire. The ladies had bonnets, it is true, but 
these bonnets were worthy the occasion. At 
the table on the platform sat Mr. Raffles, in 
the chair, beaming upon the assembled party, 
with cheerful little Mrs. Tufton and Mrs. 
Brown at one side of him, and Phoebe look- 
ing very pink and pretty, shaded from the 
too enthusiastic admiration of the crowd be- 
10 


146 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


low by the tea-urn at which she officiated. 
Next to her, the minister cast abstracted 
looks upon the assembly. He was, oh so 
interesting in his silence and pallor! — he 
spoke little ; and when any one addressed 
him, he had to come back as if from a dis- 
tance to hear. If anybody could imagine 
that Mr. Raffles contrasted dangerously with 
Mr. Vincent in that reserve and quietness, 
it would be a mistake unworthy a philo- 
sophic observer. On the contrary, the Salem 
people were all doubly proud of their pastor. 
It was not to be expected that such a man 
as he should unbend as the reverend chair- 
man did. They preferred that he should 
continue on his stilts. It would have been 
a personal humiliation to the real partisans 
of the chapel, had he really woke up and 
come down from that elevation. The more 
commonplace the ordinary “ connection ” 
was, the more proud they felt of their stu- 
dent and scholar. So Mr. Vincent leaned 
his head upon his hands and gazed unmo- 
lested over the lively company, taking in all 
the particulars of the scene, the busy groups 
engaged in mere tea-making and tea-con- 
suming — the flutter of enjoyment among 
humble girls and womankind who knew no 
pleasure more exciting — the whispers which' 
pointed out himself to strangers among the 
party — the triumphant face of Tozer at the 
end of the room, jammed against the wall, 
drinking tea out of an empty sugar-basin. 
K the scene woke any movement of human 
sympathy in the bosom of the young Non- 
conformist, he was half ashamed of himself 
for it. What had the high mission of an 
evangelist — the lofty ambition of a man 
trained to enlighten his country — the warm 
assurance of talent which felt itself entitled 
to the highest sphere, — what had these great 
things to do in a Salem Chapel tea-meeting ? 
So the lofty spirit held apart, gazing down 
from a mental elevation much higher than 
the platform ; and all the people who had 
heard his lectures pointed him out to each 
other, and congratulated themselves on that 
studious and separated aspect which was so 
unlike other men. In fact, the flne superior- 
ity of Mr. Vincent was at the present mo- 
ment the very thing that was wanted to rivet 
their chains. Even Mrs. Pigeon looked on 
with silent admiration. He was “ high ” — 
never before had Salem known a minister 


who did not condescend to be gracious at a 
tea-meeting — and the leader of the opposi- 
tion honored him in her heart. 

And even when at last the social meal was 
over, when the urns were cleared away, and 
with a rustle and flutter the assembly com- 
posed itself to the intellectual regale about 
to follow, Mr. Vincent did not change his 
position. Mr. Raffles made quite one of his 
best speeches; he kept his audience in a 
perpetual flutter of laughter and applause ; 
he set forth all the excellencies of the new 
minister with such detail and fulness as only 
the vainest would have swallowed. But the 
pleased congregation still applauded. He 
praised Mr. Tufton, the venerable father of 
the community; he praised the admirable 
deacons ; he praised the arrangements. In 
short, Mr. Raffles applauded everybody, and 
everybody applauded Mr. Raffles. After the 
chairman had concluded his speech, the hero 
of the evening gathered himself up dreamily, 
and rose from Phoebe Tozer’s side. He told 
them he had been gazing at them this hour 
past, studying the scene before him ; how 
strangely they appeared to him, standing on 
this little bright gas-lighted perch amid the 
dark sea of life that surged round them ; 
that now he and they were face to face with 
each other, it w’as not their social pleasure 
he was thinking of, but that dark unknown 
existence that throbbed and echoed around : 
he bade them remember the dark night 
which enclosed that town of Carlingford, 
without betraying the secret of its existence 
even to the nearest village ; of those dark 
streets and houses which hid so many lives | 
and hearts and tragic histories ; he enlarged I 
upon Mrs. Hilyard's idea, of the sentiment I 
of ‘‘ such a night,” till timid people threw 
glances behind them, and some sensitive 1 
mothers paused to wonder whether the min- Jj 
ister could have heard that Tommy had fallen 1 
into the Are, or Mary scalded herself, and fl 
took this way to break the news. The speech 9 
was the strangest that ever was listened to at ^ 
a tea-party. It was the wayward capricious | 
pouring forth of a fanciful young mind under ' 
an unquiet influence, having no connection i 
whatever with the “ object,” the place, or ; 
the listeners. The consequence was, that it | 
^Vtls listened to with breathless interest — 
that the faces grew pale and the eyes bright, 
and shivers of restrained emotion ran 


SALEM CHAPEL. ^4"^ 


through tho astonished audience. Mr. Vin- 
cent perceived the effect of his eloquence, as 
a nursery story-teller perceives the rising 
sob of her little hearers. When he saw it, 
he awoke, as the same nursery minstrel does 
sometimes, to feel how unreal was the sen- 
timent in his own breast which had pro- 
duced this genuiue feeling in others, and 
with a sudden amusement proceeded to 
deepen his colors and make bolder strokes' 
of effect. His success was perfect; before 
he concluded, he had in imagination dis- 
missed the harmless Salem people out of 
their very innocent recreation to the dark 
streets which thrilled round them— to the 
world of unknown life, of which each man 
for himself had some knowledge — to the 
tragedies that might be going on side by 
side with them, for aught they knew. His 
hearers drew a long breath when it was over. 
They w’ere startled, frightened, enchanted. 
If they had been witnessing a melodrama, 
they scarcely could have been more excited. 
He had put the most dreadful suggestions 
in their mind of all sorts of possible trouble ; 
he sat down with the consciousness of hav- 
ing done his duty by Salem for this night at 
least. 

But when Tozer got up after him to tell 
about the prosperity of the congregation, 
the anticlimax was felt even by the people 
of Salem. Some said, “ No, no,” audibly, 
some laughed, not a few rose up and went 
away. Vincent himself, feeling the room 
very hot, and not disliking the little com- 
motion of interest which arose on his de- 
parture, withdrew himself from the platform, 
and made his way to tho little vestry, where 
a breath of air was to be had ; for, January 
night as it was, tho crowd and the tea had 
established a very high temperature in the 
under-regions of Salem. He opened the 
window in the vestry, which looked out 
upon the damp ground behind the chapel 
and the few gravestones, and threw himself 
down on the little sofa with a sensation 
of mingled self-reproach and amusement. 
Somehow, even when one disapproves of 
one’s self for doing it, one has a certain en- 
joyment in bewildering the world. Mr. Vin- 
cent was rather pleased with his success, 
although it was only a variety of “ humbug.” 
He entertained with Christian satisfaction 
the thought that he had succeeded in intro- 
ducing a certain visionary uneasiness into 


the lively atmosphere of the tea-meeting — 
and he was delighted with his own clever- 
ness in spite of himself. 

While he lay back on his sofa, and pon - 
dered this gratifying thought, he heard a 
subdued sound of voices outside — voices and 
steps that fell with but little sound upon the 
damp grass. A languid momentary wonder 
touched the mind of the minister : who could 
have chosen so doleful a retirement? It 
was about the last place in the world for a 
lover’s interview, which was the first thing 
that suggested itself to the young man ; the 
next moment he started bolt upright, and 
listened with undisguised curiosity. That 
voice so different from the careless voices of 
Salem, the delicate refined intonations which 
had startled him in the shabby little room 
in Back Grove Street, awoke an interest in 
his mind which no youthful accents in Car- 
lingford could have excited. He sat up- 
right on the instant, and edged towards the 
open windowl The gas burned low in the 
little vestry, which nobody had been ex- 
pected to enter, and the illumination from 
all the schoolroom windows, and sounds of 
cheering and commotion there, had doubt- 
less made the absolute darkness and silence 
behind seem perfectly safe to the two invisi- 
ble people now meeting under the cloud of 
night. Mr. Vincent was not startled into 
eavesdropping unawares, nor did he engage 
in any sophistical argument to justify him- 
self for listening. On the contrary, he lis- 
tened honestly, with the full intention of 
hearing all he could — suddenly changed 
from the languid sentimentalist, painful and 
self-conscious, which the infiuences of the 
evening had made him, into a spectator very 
wide awake and anxious, straining his ear 
to catch some information of a history, in 
which a crowd of presentiments warned him 
that he himself should yet be concerned. 

“ If you must speak, speak here,” said that 
voice which Vincent had recognized : “ it is 
scarcely the atmosphere for a .man of your 
fine taste, to be sure ; but considering the 
subject of the conference, it will do. What 
do you want with me ? ” 

“ By Jove, it looks dangerous !— what do 
you mean to suggest by this sweet rendez- 
Yous — murder ? ” said the man, whoever he 
was, who had accompanied Mrs. Hilyard to 
the damp yard of Salem Chapel, with its 
scattered graves. 


148 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


“ My nerves are strong,” she answered. 
“ It is a pity you should take the trouble to 
be melodramatic. Do you think I am vain 
enough to imagine that you could subject 
your|elf to all the unpleasant accessories of 
being hanged on my account Fancy a 
rough hempen rope, and the dirty fingers 
that would adjust it. Pah ! you would not 
risk it for me.” 

Her companion swore a muttered oath. 
“ By Jove ! I believe you’d be content to be 
murdered, to make such an end of me,” he 
answered, in the baffled tone of rage which 
a man naturally sinks into when engaged in 
unequal conflict of recrimination with a wo- 
man. 

“ This is too conjugal,” said Mrs. Hilyard ; 
“ it reminds me of former experiences ; come 
to the point, I beg of you. You did not 
come here and seek me out that we might 
have an amusing conversation — what do you 
want with me? ” 

“ Don’t tempt me too far with your con- 
founded impertinence,” exclaimed the man, 

or there is no telling what may happen. 
I want to know where that child is j you 
know I do. I mean to reclaim my rights so 
far as she is concerned. If she had been a 
ward in Chancery, a man might have sub- 
mitted. But I am a reformed individual — 
my life is of the most exemplary description 
— no court in Christendom would keep her 
from my custody now. I want the girl for 
her own good — she shall marry brilliantly, 
which she never could do with you. I know 
she’s grown up as lovely as I expected ” 

“ How do you know ? ” interrupted Mrs. 
Hilyard, with a certain hoarseness in her 
voice. 

“ Ah ! I have touched you at last. Re- 
membering what her mother was,” he went 
on, in a mocking tone, “ though I am 
grieved to see how much you have gone off 
in late years, and having an humble con- 
sciousness of her father’s personal advan- 
tagess, and, in short, of her relatives in gen- 
eral, I know she’s a little beauty — and, by 
Jove, she shall be a duchess yet.” 

There was a pause — something like a hard 
sob thrilled in the air, rather a vibration 
than a sound ; and Vincent, making a des- 
perate gesture of rage towards the school- 
3’oom, from which a burst of applause at that 
moment sounded, approached closer to the 


window. Then the woman’s voice burst 
forth passionate, but subdued. 

“You have seen her ! you ! — you that 
blasted her life before she was born, and 
confused her sweet mind forever — ^how' did 
you dare to look at my child ? And I,” cried 
the passionate voice, forgetting even cau- 
tion — “ I, that would give my life drop by 
drop to restore what never can be restored to 
that victim of your sin and my weakness — 

I do not see her. I refuse myself that com- 
fort. I leave it to others to do all that love 
and pity can do for my baby. You speak 
of murder — man ! if I had a knife, I could 
find it in my heart to put an end to your hor- 
rid career ; and, look you, I will — Coward ! I 
will ! I will kill you before you shall lay 
your vile hands on my child.” 

“ She-wolf ! ” cried the man, grinding his 
teeth, “ do you know how much it would be 
to my advantage if you never left this lonely 
spot you have brought me to ? By Jove, I 
have the greatest mind ” 

Another momentary silence, — Vincent, 
wound up to a high state of excitement, 
sprang noiselessly to his feet, and was rush- 
ing to the window to proclaim his presence, 
when Mrs. Hilyard’s voice, perfectly calm 
and in its usual tone, brought him back to 
himself. 

“ Second thoughts are best. It would, 
compromise you horribly, and put a stop to 
many pleasures — not to speak of those dread- 
ful dirty fingers arranging that rough rope 
round your neck, which, pardon me, I can’t 
help thinking of when you associate your 
own name with such a vulgar suggestion as 
murder. I should not mind these little de- 
tails, but 7jou! However, I excited myself 
unreasonably j you have not seen her. That 
skilful inference of yours was only a lie. 
She was not at Lonsdale, you know.” 

“How the devil do you know I was at 
Lonsdale P ” said her companion. 

“ I keep myself informed of the move- 
ments of so interesting a person. She w^as 
not there.” 

“ No,” replied the man, “ she was not 
there ; but I need not suggest to your clear 
wits that there are other Lonsdales in Eng- 
land. What if Miss Mildmay were in her 
father’s lawful guardianship now?” 

Here the air palpitated with a cry, the cry as . 
of a wild creature in sudden blind anguish. It 


SALEM CHAPEL. l^P 


was echoed by a laugh of mockery and ex- 
ultation, “ Should you like me to tell you 
which of the Lonsdales you honored with 
your patronage?” continued the mocking 
voice : “ that in Derbyshire, or that in Dev- 
onshire, or that in Cumberland ? lam af- 
flicted to have defeated your skilful scheme 
so easily. Now that you see I am a match 
for you, perhaps you will perceive that it is 
better to yield peaceably, and unite with me 
in securing the girl’s good. She needs only 
to be seen to ” 

“ Who do you imagine you are address- 
ing, Colonel Mildmay ? ” said Mrs. Hilyard, 
haughtily ; “ there has been enough of this : 
you are mistaken if you think you can de- 
ceive me for more than a moment : my child 
is not in your hands, and never will be, 
please God : but mark what I say,” she con- 
tinued, drawing a flerce, hard breath, “if 
you should ever succeed in tracing her, if 
you should ever be able to snatch her from 
me, then confess your sins, and say your 
last prayers — for as sure as I live you shall 
die in a week.” 

“ She-devil ! murderess ! ” cried her com- 
panion, not without a certain shade of alarm 
in his voice j “ if your power were equal to 
your will- ” 

“ In that case my power should be equal 
to my will,” said the steady, delicate woman’s 
i voice, as clear in very flne articulation as if 
I it were some peaceful arrangement of daily 
I life for which she declared herself capable : 
“ you should not escape if you surrounded 
yourself with a king’s guards. I swear to 
\ you, if you do what you say, that I will kill 
you somehow, by whatever means I can at- 
i tain— and I have never yet broken my word.” 

' An unsteady deflant laugh was the only 
reply. The man was evidently more im- 
■ pressed with the sincerity and power to ex- 
ecute her intentions of the woman than she 
' with his. Apparently they stood reprding 
each other for another momentary interval 
: in silence. Again Mrs. Hilyard was the 
* first to speak. 

“ I presume our conference is over now,” 
she said, calmly ; “ how you could think of 
seeking it is more than I can understand. 
I suppose poor pretty Alice, who thinks 
' every woman can be persuaded, induced you 
to attempt this. Don’t let me keep you any 
* longer in a place so repugnant to your taste. 
; I am going to the tea-meeting at Salem 


Chapel to hear my young friend the minister 
speaking : perhaps this unprofitable discus- 
sion has lost me that advantage. You heard 
him the other night, and were pleased, I 
trust. Good-night. I suppose, before leav- 
ing you, I should thank you for having 
spared my life.” 

Vincent heard the curse upon her and her 
stinging tongue, which burst in a gi’owl of 
rage from the lips of the other, but he did 
not see the sathical courtesy with which this 
strange woman swept past, nor the scarcely 
controllable impulse which made the man 
lift his stick and clench it in his hand as she 
turned away from him those keen eyes, out 
of which even the gloom of night could not 
quench the light. But even Mrs. Hilyard 
herself never knew how near, how very near, 
she was at that moment to the unseen world. 
Had her step been less habitually firm and 
rapid, — had she lingered on her way — the 
temptation might have been too strong for 
the man, maddened by many memories. 
He made one stride after her, clenching his 
stick. It was perfectly dark in that narrow 
passage which led out to the front of the 
chapel. She might have been stunned in a 
moment, and left there to die, without any 
man being the wiser. It was not virtue, nor 
hatred of bloodshed, nor repugnance to 
harm her, which restrained Colonel Mild- 
may’s hand : it was half the rapidity of her 
movements, and half the instinct of a gentle- 
man, which vice itself could not entirely oblit- 
erate. Perhaps he was glad when he saw’ her 
disappear from before him down the lighted 
steps into the Salem schoolroom. He stood 
in the darkness and watched her out of 
sight, himself unseen by any one, and then 
departed on his way, a splendid figure, all 
unlike the population of Grove Street. Some 
of the Salem people, dispersing at the mo- 
ment, saw him sauntering down the street 
grand and leisurely, and recognized the gen- 
tleman who had been seen in the Music 
Hall with Lady Western. They thought he 
must have come privately once more to lis- 
ten to their minister’s eloquence. Proba- 
bly Lady Western herself, the leader of 
fashion in Carlingford, would appear next 
Sunday to do Mr. Vincent honor. The 
sight of this very fine gentleman picking his 
leisurely way along the dark pavement of 
Grove Street, leaning confiidngly upon that 
stick over which his tall person swayed with 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


150 

fashionable languor, gave a climax to the 
evening in the excited imaginations of Mr. 
Vincent’s admirers. Nobody but the minis- 
ter and one utterly unnoted individual in 
the crowd knew what had brought the Colo- 
nel and his stick to such a place. Nobody 
but the Colonel himself, and the watchful 
heavens above, knew how little had pre- 
vented him from leaving a silent, awful wit- 
ness of that secret interview upon the chapel 
steps. 

When Mr. Vincent returned to the plat- 
form, which he did hurriedly, Mr. Pigeon 
was addressing the meeting. In the flutter 
of inquiries whether he was better, and gen- 
tle hopes from Phcebe that his studies had 
not been too much for him, nobody appeared 
to mark the eagerness of his eyes, and the 
curiosity in his face. He sat down in his 
old place, and pretended to listen to Mr. 
Pigeon. Anxiously from under the shadow 
of his hands he inspected the crowd before 
him, who had recovered their spirits. In a 
corner close to the door he at last found the 
face he was in search of. Mrs. Hilyard sat 
at the end of a table, leaning her face on her 
hand. She had her eyes fixed upon the 
speaker, and there passed now and then 
across the corners of her close-shut mouth 
that momentary movement which was her 
symbol for a smile. She was not pretending 
to listen, but giving her entire attention to 
the honest poulterer. Now and then she 
turned her eyes from Pigeon, and perused 
the room and the company with rapid glances 
of amusement and keen observation. Per- 
haps her eyes gleamed keener, and her dark 
cheek owned a slight flush — that was all. 
Out of her mysterious life — out of that inter- 
view’, so full of violence and passion — the 
strange woman came, without a moment’s 
interval, to amuse herself by looking at and 
listening to all those homely innocent people. 
Could it be that she was taking notes of Pig- 
eon’s speech ? Suddenly, all at once, she had 
taken a pencil out of her pocket and began 
to w'rite, glancing up now and then towards 
the speaker. Mr. Vincent’s head swam with 
the wonder he w’as contemplating — w^as she 
flesh and blood after all, or some wonderful 
skelelon living a galvanic life ? But when 
he asked himself the question, her cry of sud- 
den anguish, her wild, wicked promise to kill 
the man who stole her daughter, came over 
his mind and arrested his thoughts. He, 


dallying as he was on the verge of life, full 
of fantastic hopes and disappointment, could 
only pretend to listen to Pigeon ; but the 
' good poulterer turned gratified eyes tow'ards 
Mrs. Hilyard. He recognized her real at- 
tention and interest ; was it the height of 
voluntary sham and deception ? — or was she 
really taking notes ? 

The mystery was solved after the meeting 
w'as over. There w’as some music, in the first 
place — anthems in which all the strength of 
Salem united, Tozer taking a heavy bass, 
while Phoebe exerted herself so in the soprano 
that Mr. Vincent’s attention was forcibly 
called off his own meditations, in terror lest 
something should break in the throat so 
hardly strained. Then there were some or- 
anges, another speech, a hymn, and a bene- 
diction ; and then Mr. Rafiles sprang joyfully 
up, and leaned over the platform to shake 
hands with his friends. This last process 
was trjing. Mr. Vincent, who could no 
longer take refuge in silence, descended into 
the retiring throng. He was complimented 
on his speech, and even by some superior 
people, who had a mind to be fashionable, 
upon the delightful evening they had enjoyed. 
When they were all gone, there were still the 
Tozers, the Browns, the Pigeons, Mrs. Tuf- 
ton, and Mr. Raffles. He was turning back 
to them disconsolate, when he was suddenly 
confronted by Mrs. Hilyard out of her cor- 
ner with the fly-leaf of the hymn-book the 
unscrupulous woman had been writing in, 
torn out in her hand. 

“ Stop a minute,” she cried, “ I want to 
speak to you. I want your help, if you will 
give it me. Don’t be surprised at what I ask. 
Is your mother a good w’oman — was it she that 
trained you to act to the forlorn as you did 
to me last night ? I have been too hasty — 

I take away your breath ; — never mind, there ■ 
is no time to choose one's words. The but- 
terman is looking at us, Mr. Vincent. The 
ladies are alarmed ; they think I want spir- 
itual consolation at this unsuitable moment. 
Make haste — answer my question. Would 
she do an act of Christian charity to a woman 
in distress ? ” 

“ My mother is — yes, I know she -would— 
what do you want of her ? My mother is 
the best and tcnderest of women,” cried Vin- 
cent, in utter amazement. 

“ I want to send a child to her — a perse- 
cuted, helpless child, whom it is the object 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


of my life to keep out of evil hands,” said 
Mrs. Hilyard, her dark thin face growing 
darker and more pallid, her eyes softening 
with tears. “ She will be safe at Lonsdale 
now', and I cannot go in my own person at 
present to take her anywhere. Here is a 
message for the telegraph,” she added, hold- 
ing up the paper which Vincent had supposed 
to be notes of Mr. Pigeon’s speech ; “ take 
it for me — send it off to-night-^you will? 
and write to your mother ; she shall suffer 
no loss, and I will thank her on my knees. 
It is life or death.” 

“ I know' — I am aware ! ” cried Vincent, 
not knowing what he said. “ There is no 
time to be lost.” 

She put the paper into his hand, and 
clasped it tight between both of hers, not 
knowing, in the excitement which she was 
so w'ell trained to repress, that he had be- 
trayed any special knowledge of her distress. 
It seemed natural, in that strain of despera- 
tion, that everybody should understand her. 
“ Come to-morrow and tell me,” she said, 
hurriedly, and then- hastened away, leaving 
him with the paper folded close into his hand 
as her hard grasp had left it. He turned 
aw'ay from the group which aw'aited his com- 
ing with some curiosity and impatience, and 
read the message by the light of one of the 
garlanded and festive lamps. “ Rachel Rus- 
sell to Miss Smith, Lonsdale, Devonshire. 
Immediately on receiving this, take the child 
to Lonsdale, near Peterborough — to Mrs. 
Vincent’s; leave the train at some station 
near town, and drive to a corresponding sta- 
tion on the Great Northern ; don’t enter 
London. Blue veil — care — not to be left 
for an instant. I trust all to you.” Mr. 
Vincent put the message in his pocket-book, 
took it out again — tried it in his purse, his 
waistcoat pocket, everywhere he could think 
of—finally, closed his hand over it as at first, 
and in a high state of excitement went up to 
the chattering group at the little platform, 
the only thought in his mind being how to 
get rid of them, that he might hasten upon 
his mission before the telegraph office was 
closed for the night. 

And, as was to be expected, Mr. Vincent 
found it no easy matter to get rid of the 
Tozers and Pigeons, who were all overfiow- 
ing about the tea-party, its provisions, its 
speeches, and its success. He stood with 
that bit of paper clenched in his hand, and 


151 

endured the jokes of his reverend brother, 
the remarks of Mrs. Tufton, the blushes of 
Phoebe. He stood for half an hour at least 
perforce in unwilling and constrained civility 
— at last he became desperate ; — with a wild 
promise to return presently, he rushed out 
into the night. The station was about half 
a mile out of Carlingford, at the new end, a 
long way past Dr. Rider’s. When Vincent 
reached it, the telegraph clerk was putting 
on his hat to go away, and did not relish the 
momentary detention ; when the message 
was received and despatched, the young min- 
ister drew breath — he went out of the office, 
wiping his hot forehead, to the railway plat- 
form, w'here the last train for town was just 
starting. As Vincent stood recovering him- 
self and regaining his breath, the sudden 
fiash of a match struck in one of the carriages 
attracted his attention. He looked, and saw 
by the lamp inside a man stooping to light 
his cigar. The action brought the face, bend- 
ing down close to the wiudow, clearly out 
against the dark-blue background of the 
empty carriage ; hair light, fine and thin, in 
long but scanty locks — a high-featured eagle- 
face, too sharp for beauty now, but bearing all 
the traces of superior good looks departed — a 
light beard, so light that it did not count for 
its due in the aspect of that remrakable coun- 
tenance — a figure so full of ease and haughty 
grace ; all these particulars Vincent noted 
W'ith a keen rapid inspection. In another 
moment the long leash of can-iages had 
plunged into the darkness. With a strange 
flush of triumph he watched them disappear, 
and turned away with a smile on his lips. 
The message of warning was already tingling 
along the sensitive wires, and must outspeed 
the slow human traveller. This face, which 
so stamped itself upon his memory, which he 
fancied he could see pictured on the air as 
he returned along the dark road, was the face 
of the man who had been Lady Western’s 
companion at the lecture. That it was the 
same face which had confronted Mrs. Hilyard 
in the dark graveyard behind Salem Chapel 
he never doubted. With a thrill of active 
hatred and fierce enmity which it was diffi- 
cult to account for, and still more difficult 
for a man of his profession to excuse, the 
young man looked forward to the unknown 
future with a certainty of meeting that face 
again. 

We dron a charitable veil over the conclu- 


152 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


sion of the night. Mr. Raffles and Mr. Vin- 
cent supped at Pigeon’s, along with the 
Browns and Tozers ; and Phoebe’s testimony 
is on record that it was a feast of reason and 
a flow of soul. 

CHAPTER XI. 

The next morning Vincent awoke with a 
sense of personal occupation and business, 
which perhaps is only possible to a man en- 
gaged with the actual occurrences of indi- 
vidual life. Professional duties and the 
general necessities of existing, do not give 
that thrill of sensible importance and use 
which a man feels, who is busy with affairs 
which concern his own or other people’s very 
heart and being. The young Nonconformist 
was no longer the sentimentalist who h^d 
made the gaping assembly at Salem Chapel 
uneasy over their tea-drinking. That dark 
and secret ocean of life which he had apos- 
trophized, opened up to him immediately 
thereafter one of its most mysterious scenes. 
This had shaken Vincent rudely out of his 
own youthful vagaries. Perhaps the most 
true of philosophers, contemplating, how- 
ever profoundly, the secrets of nature or 
thought, would come to a sudden standstill 
over a visible abyss of human guilt, wretch- 
edness, heroic self-restraint, and courage, 
yawning apparent in the meditative way. 
What, then, were the poor dialectics of 
Church and State controversy, or the fluctu- 
ations of an uncertain young mind feeling 
itself superior to its work, to such a spectacle 
of passionate life, full of evil and of noble 
qualities — of guilt and suffering more in- 
tense than anything philosophy dreagis of? 
The thin veil which youthful ignorance, be- 
lieving in the supremacy of thought and 
superior charm of intellectual concerns, lays 
over the world, shrivelled up under the fiery 
lurid light of that passionate scene. Two 
people clearly, who had once loved each 
other, hating each other to the death, strug- 
gling desperately over a lesser thread of life 
proceeding from them both — the mother, 
driven to the lowest extremities of exist- 
ence, standing out like a wild creature to 
defend her offspring — what could philosophy 
say to such phenomena ? A wild circle of 
passion sprang into conscious being under 
the young man’s half-frightened eyes — wild 
figures that filled the world, leaving small 
space for the calm suggestions of thought, 


and even to truth itself so little vantage- 
ground. Love, Hatred, Anger, Jealousy, 
Revenge— how many more ? Vincent, who 
was no longer the lofty reasoning Vincent of 
Homerton, found life look difierent under 
the light of those torch-bearers. But he 
had no leisure on this particular morning to 
survey the subject. He had to carry his 
report and explanation to the strange woman 
who had so seized upon and involved him 
in her concerns. 

Mrs. Hilyard was seated in her room, just 
as he had seen her before, working with fly- 
ing needle and nervous fingers at her coarsest 
needlework. She said, “ Come in,” and did 
not rise when he entered. She gave him 
an eager, inquiring look, more importunate 
and commanding than any words, but never 
stopped working, moving her thin fingers as 
if there was some spell in the continuance 
of her labor. She was impatient of his si- 
lence before he had closed the door — des- 
perate when he said the usual greeting. She 
opened her pale lips and spoke, but Vincent 
heard nothing. She was beyond speech. 

“ The message went off last night, and I 
wrote to my mother,” said Vincent ; “ don’t 
fear. She will do what you wish, and every- 
thing will be well.” 

It was some time before Mrs. Hilyard 
quite conquered her agitation ; when she 
succeeded, she spoke so entirely in her usual 
tone that Vincent started, being inexperi- 
enced in such changes. He contemplated 
her with tragic eyes in her living martyr- 
dom ; she, on the contrary, more conscious 
of her own powers, her own strength of re- 
sistance and activity of life, than of any sac- 
rifice, had nothing about her the least trag- 
ical, and spoke according to nature. Instead 
of any passionate burst of self-revelation, 
this is what she said-— 

“ Thank you. I am very much obliged 
to you. How everything is to be well, does 
not appear to me ; but I will take your word 
for it. I hope I may take your word for 
your mother also, Mr. Vincent. You have 
a right to know how this is. Do you claim 
it, and must I tell you now ? ” 

Here for the first time Vincent recollected 
in what an unjustifiable way he had obtained 
his information. Strangely enough, it had 
never struck him before. He had felt him- 
self somehow identified with the woman in 
the strange interview he had overheard. 


SALEM CHAPEL. 153 


The man was a personal enemy. His inter- 
est in the matter was so honest and simple 
amid all the complication of his youthful 
superficial insincerities, that -this equivocal 
action was one of the very few which Vin- 
cent had actually never questioned even to 
himself. He was confoudded now when he 
saw how the matter stood. His face be- 
came suddenly crimson ; — shame took pos- 
session of his soul. 

“ Good heavens, I have done the most 
dishonorable action ! ” cried Vincent, be- 
trayed into sudden exclamation by the hor- 
ror of the discovery. Then he paused, turn- 
ing an alarmed look upon his new friend. 
She took it very calmly. She glanced up at 
him with a comic glance in her eyes, and 
a twitch at the corners of her mouth. Not- 
withstanding last night — notwithstanding 
the anxiety which she dared not move in her 
own person to alleviate — she was still capa- 
ble of being amused. Her eyes said, 
“ What now ? ” with no very alarming ap- 
prehensions. The situation was a frightful 
one for poor Vincent. 

“You will be quite justified in turning me 
out of your house,” he said, clearing his 
throat, and in great confusion: “but if you 
I will believe, I never till this moment saw 

how atrocious : Mrs. Hilyard — I was in 

the vestry ; the window was open ; I heard 
your conversation last night.” 

Foi‘ a moment Vincent had all the punish- 
ment he expected, and greater. Her eyes 
blazed upon him out of that pale dark face 
with a certain contempt and lofty indiffer- 
ence. There was a pause. Mr. Vincent 
crushed his best hat in his hands, and sat 
speechless doing penance. He was dis- 
mayed with the discovery of his own mean- 
ness. Nobody could deliver such a cutting 
sentence as he was pronouncing on himself. 
■ ^ “ All the world might have listened, so far 

i ' as I am concerned,” she said, after a while, 
quietly enough. “I- am sorry you did it; 
but the discovery is worse for yourself than 
for me.” Then, after another pause, “I 
don’t mean to quarrel. I am glad for my 
own sake, though sorry for yours. Now you 
know better than I can tell you. There were 
some pleasant flowers of speech to be gath- 
ered in that dark garden,” she continued, 
with another odd upward gleam'of her eyes. 
“ We must have startled your clerical ideas 
rather. At the moment, however, Mr. Vin- 


cent, people like Colonel Mildmay and my- 
self mean what w^e say.” 

“ If I had gained my knowledge in a 
legitimate way,” said the shame-stricken 
minister, not venturing to look her in the 
face, “ I should have said that I hoped it 
was only for the moment.” 

Mrs. Hilyard laid down her work, *and 
looked across at him with undisguised 
amusement. “ I am sorry there is nobody 
here to perceive this beautiful situation,” 
she said. “ Who would not have their 
ghostly father commit himself, if he re- 
pented after this fashion ? Thank you, Mr. 
Vincent, for what you don’t say. And now 
we shall drop the subject, don’t you think ? 
Were the deacons all charmed with the tea- 
meeting last night ? ” 

“You want me to go now,” said Vincent, 
rising, with disconcerted looks. 

“ Not because I am angry. I am not an- 
gry,” she said, rising and holding out her 
hand to him. “ It was a pity, but it was an 
inadvertance, and no dishonorable action. 
Yes, go. I am best to be avoided till I hear 
how this journey has been managed, and 
what your mother sayS'. It was a sudden 
thought, that sending them to Lonsdale. I 
know that even if he has not already found 
the right one, he will search all the others 
now. And your Lonsdale has been exam- 
ined and exhausted ; all is safe there. Yes, 
go. I am glad you know; but don’t say 
anything to Alice, if you see her, as she is 
sure to seek you out. You know who I 
mean by Alice? Lady Western — yes. 
Good-by. I trust you, notwithstanding the 
vestry window; but close it after this on 
January nights”’ 

She had sunk into her seat again, and was 
absorbed in her needlework, before Vincent 
left the room. He looked back upon her 
before he shut the door, but she had no look 
to spare from that all-engrossing work ; her 
thin fingers were more scarred than ever and 
stained with the coarse blue stuff. All his 
life after the young man never saw that color 
without thinking of the stains on those poor 
hands. 

He went about his work assiduously all 
that day, visiting sick people, poor people, 
men and women, “ which were sinners.” 
That dark ocean of life with which he had 
frightened Salem people last night, Mr. Vin- 
cent made deeper investigations into this 


154 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


day than he had made before during all the 
time he had been in Carlingford. He kept 
clear of the smug comfort of the leading 
people of “ the connection.” Absolute 
T.-ant, suffering, and sorrow, were compara- 
tively new to him ; and being as yet a 
stranger to philanthropic schemes, and not 
at ail scientific in the distribution of his 
sympathies, the minister of Salem con- 
ducted himself in a way which would have 
called forth the profoundest contempt and 
pity of the curate of St. Roque’s. He be- 
lieved everybody’s story, and emptied his 
purse with the wildest liberality ; for, indeed, 
visitation of the poor had not been a branch 
of study at Homerton. Tired and all but 
pennilesss, he did not turn his steps home- 
ward till the wintry afternoon was sinking 
into night, and the lamps began to be lighted 
about the cheerful streets. As he came into 
George Street he saw Lady Western’s car- 
riage waiting at the door of Masters’. Alice ! 
that was the name they called her. He 
looked at the celestial chariot wistfully. He 
had nothing to do with it or its beautiful 
mistress — never, as anything but a stranger, 
worshipping afar off, could the Dissenting 
minister of Carlingford approach that lovely 
vision — never think of her but as of a planet, 
ineffably distant — never — 

“ My lady’s compliments,” said a tall voice 
on a level with Vincent’s eyebrows : “ will 
you please to step over and speak to her 
ladyship ? ” The startled Nonconformist 
raised his eyes. The big footman, whose 
happy privilege it was to wait upon that lady 
of his dreams, stood respectful by his side, 
and from the carriage opposite the fairest 
face in the world was beaming, the prettiest 
of hands waving to him. Vincent believed 
afterwards that he crossed the entire breadth 
of George Street in a single stride. 

“ I am so glad to see you, Mr. Vincent,” 
said Lady Western, giving him her hand; 
“I did so want to see you after the other 
night. Oh, how could you be so clever and 
wicked — so wicked to your friends ! Indeed, 
I shall never be pleased till you recant and 
confess how wrong you were. I must tell 
you why I went that night. I could not tell 
what on . earth to do with my brother, and I 
took him to amuse him ; or else, you know, 
I never could have gone to hear the poor 
dear old Church attacked. And how violent 
you were too ! Indeed I must not say how 


clever I thought it, or I should feel I was 
an enemy to the Church. Now I want you 
to dine with me, and I shall have somebody 
to come who will be a match for you. I am 
very fond of clever society, though there is 
so little of it in Carlingford. Tell me, will 
you come to-morrow? I am disengaged. 
Oh, pray, do! and Mr. Wentworth shall 
come too, and you shall fight.” 

Lady Western clapped her pretty hands 
together with the greatest animation. As for 
Vincent, all the superior thoughts in which 
he would probably have indulged — the con- 
trast he would have drawn betw'een the des- 
perate brother and this butterfly creature, 
fluttering on the edge of mysteries so dark 
and evil, had she been anybody else — de- 
serted him totally in the present crisis. She 
was not anybody else — she was herself. The 
words that fell from those sweetest lips were 
of a half-divine simplicity to the bewildered 
young man. He would have gone off 
straightw^ay to the end of the world if she 
had chosen to command him. Ail unwarned 
by his previous failure, paradise opened again 
to his delighted eyes. 

“ And I want to consult you about our 
friend,” said Lady Western ; “it will be so 
kind of you to come. I am so pleased you 
have no engagement. I am sure you thought 
us very stupid last time ; and I am stupid, I 
confess,” added the beauty, turning those 
sweet eyes, which were more eloquent than 
genius, upon the slave who was reconquered 
by a glance ; but I like clever people dearly. 
Good-by till to-morrow. I shall quite reckon 
upon to-morrow. Oh, there is Mr. Went- 
worth ! John, call Mr. Wentworth to speak 
to me. Good-morning — remember, half- 
past six — now, you must not forget.” 

Spite of the fact that Mr. Wentworth took 
his place immediately by the side of the car- 
riage, Vincent passed on, a changed man I 
Forget ! He smiled to himself at the possi- 
bility, and as he walked on to his lodging, a 
wonderful maze of expectation fell upon the 
young man’s mind. Why, he asked, was he 
brought into this strange connection with 
Her relations and their story ? what could 
be, he said to himself with a little awe, the 
purpose of that Providence wLich shapes 
men’s ends, in interweaving his life with 
Hers by these links of common interest? 
The skies throbbed with wonder and miracle 
as soon as they were lighted up by her smile. 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


155 


Who could predict what might be coming, ■ 
through all the impossibilities of fact and ^ 
circumstance ? He would not dissipate that 
delicious haze by any definite expectations 
like those which brought him to sudden 
grief on a former occasion. He was content 
to believe it was not for nothing that all ■ 
these strange circles of fate were weaving 
round his charmed feet. i 

In this elevated frame of mind, scarcely 
aware of the prosaic ground he trod, Vincent 
reached home. The little maid at ihe door 
said something about a lady, to which he 
paid no attention, being occupied with his 
own thoughts. "With an unconscious illu- 


mination on his face he mounted the stair 
lightly, three steps at a time, to his own 
rooms. The lamp was lighted in his little 
sitting-room, and some one rose nervously 
from the table as he went in at the door. 
What was this sudden terror which fell upon 
the young man in the renewed glory of his 
youthful hopes? It was his mother, pale 
and 'faint with sleepless, tearful eyes, who, 
with the cry of an aching heart, worn out 
by fatigue and suspense, came forward, 
holding out anxious hands to him, and 
dropped in an utter abandon of weariness 
and distress into his astonished arms. 





IV 


m ’ 


: : - - ..[ih- 


, a. 


i r’ 


156 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


PART IV.— -CHAPTER XII. 

“What has happened? For Heaven’s 
sake tell me, mother,” cried Vincent, as she 
sank back, wiping her eyes, and altogether 
overpowered, half with the trouble which ho 
did not know, half with the joy of seeing him 
again— “ say it out at once, and don’t keep 
me in this dreadful suspense. Susan ? ^ She 
is not married ? What is wrong ? ” ^ 

“ O my dear boy ! ” said Mrs. Vincent, 
recovering herself, but still trembling in her 
agitation — “ O my affectionate boy, always 
thinking of us in his good heart ! No, dear. 
It’s — it’s nothing particular happened. Let 
me compose myself a little, Arthur, and take 
breath.” 

“ But, Susan ? ” cried the excited young 
man. 

“ Susan, poor dear ! — she is very well; 
and — and very happy up to this moment, 
my darling boy,” said Mrs. Vincent, “ though 
whether she ought to be happy under the 
circumstances — or whether it’s only a cruel 
trick — or whether I haven’t been foolish and 
precipitate — but my dear, what could I do 
but come to you, Arthur ? I could not have 
kept it from her if I had stayed an hour 
longer at home. And to put such a dread- 
ful suspicion into her head, when it might 
be all a falsehood, would have only been kill- 
ing her ; and, my dear boy, now I see your 
face again. I’m not so frightened, and surely 
it can be cleared up, and all will be well.” 

Vincent, whose anxiety conquered his im- 
patience, even while exciting it, kneeled 
down by his mother’s side and took her 
hands, which still trembled, into his own. 
' “ Mother, think that I am very anxious ; 
that I don’t know what you are referring to ; 
and that the sudden sight of you has filled 
me with all sort of terrors — for I know you 
would not lightly take such a journey all by 
yourself,” said the young man, growing still 
more anxious as he thought of it — “ and try 
to collect your thqughts and tell me what is 
WTong.” 

His mother drew one of her hands out of 
his, laid it on his head, and fondly smoothed 
back his hair. “ My dear, good son ! you 
were always so sensible — I wish you had 
never left us,” she said, w’ith a groan ; “ and 
indeed it was a great thought to undertake 
such a journey; and since I came here, Ar- 
thur, I have felt so fiurried and strange, that 
I have not, as you see, even taken off my 


bonnet ; but I think now you’ve come, dear, if 
you would ring the bell and order up the tea ? 
When I see you, and see you looking so well, 
Arthur, it seems as if things could never be so 
bad, you know. My dear,” she said at last, 
with a little quiver in her voice, stopping 
and looking at him with a kind of nervous 
alarm, “it was about Mr. Fordham, you^t 
may be sure.” ^ ’ a 

“ Tea directly ! ” said Vincent to the little | 
maid, who appeared just at this crisis, and 
who was in her turn alarmed by the brief 
and peremptory order. “ What about Mr. 
Fordham ? ” he said, helping his mother to | 
take off the cloak and warm wraps in which 
she had been, in her nervous tremor and 
agitation, sitting wrapped up while she 


waited his return. ' 

“ O my dear, my dear,” cried poor Mrs. 
Vincent, wringing her hands, “ if he should 
not turn out as he ought, how can I ever for- 
give myself? I had a kind of warning in 
my mind the first time he came to the house, 
and I have always dreamt such uncomfort- 
able dreams of him, Arthur. Oh! if you 
only could have seen him, my dear boy! 
But he was such a gentleman, and had such 
ways. I am sure he must have mixed in the 
very highest society — and he seemed so to 
appreciate Susan — not only to be in love 
with her, you know, my dear, as any young 
man might, but to really appreciate my sAveet 
girl. O Arthur, Arthur, if he should turn 
out badly, it will kill me, for my Susan will 
break her heart.” 

“ Mother, you drive me frantic. What 
has he done ? ” cried poor Vincent. 

“ He has done nothing, my dear, that I 
know of. It is not him, Arthur, for he has 
been gone for a month, arranging his affairs, 
you know, before the wedding, and writes 
Susan regularly, and beautiful letters. It is 
a dreadful scrawl I got last night. I have it 
in my pocket-book. It came by the last 
post when Susan was out, thank Heaven. 
I’ll show it you presently, my dear, as soon 
as I can find it, but I have so many papers 
in my pocket-book. She saw directly when 
she came in that something had happened, 
and, O Arthur, it was so hard to keep it from 
her. I don’t know when I have kept any- 
thing from her before. I can’t tell hoAv we 
got through the night. But this morning I 
made up the most artful story I could — here 
is the dreadful letter, my dear, at last — about 


SALEM CHAPEL. / 157 


being determined to see you, and making 
sure that you were taking care of yourself; 
for she knew as well as me how negligent 
you always are about wet feet. Are you sure 
your feet are dry now, Arthur ? Yes, my 
dear boy, it makes me very uncomfortable. 
You don’t wonder to see your poor mother 
here, now, after that ? ” 

The letter which Vincent got meanwhile, 
and anxiously read, was as follows — the 
handwriting very mean, with a little tremor 
in it, which seemed to infer that the writer 
was an old man : — 

“ Madam ; — Though I am but a poor man, 
I can’t abear to see wrong going on, and do 
nothink to stop it. Madam, I beg of you to 
excuse me, as am unknown to you, and as 
can’t sign my honest name to it like a man. 
This is the only way as I can give you a 
word of warning. Don’t let the young lady 
marry him as she’s agoing to, not if her heart 
should break first. Don’t have nothink to 
do with Mr. Fordham. That’s not his right 
name, and he’s got a wife living — and this 
I say is true, as sure as I have to answer at 
the judgment ; — and I say to you as a friend, 
stop it, stop it ! Don’t let it go on a step, 
if you vally the young lady’s charackter and 
her life. I don’t add no more, because that’s 
all I dare say, being only a servant ; but I 
hope it’s enough to save the poor young lady 
out of his clutches, as is a man that goeth 
about seeking whom he may devour. — From 
a well-wisher, though a stranger.” 

Mrs. Vincent’s mind was easier when this 
epistle was out of her hands. She stood up 
before the mirror to take off her bonnet, and 
put her cap tidy ; she glided across the room 
to take up the shawl and cloak which her 
son had flung upon the little sofa anyhow, 
and to fold them and lay them together on 
a chair. Then the trim little figure ap- 
proached the table, on which stood a dimly 
burning lamp, which smoked as lamps will 
when they have it all their own way. Mrs. 
Vincent turned down the light a little, and 
then proceeded to remove the globe and 
chimney by way of seeing what was wrong 

bringing her own anxious, patient face, 

still retaining many traces of the sweet come- 
liness which had almost reached the length 
of beauty in her daughter, into the full illu- 
mination of the smoky blaze. Notwithstand- 
ing the smoke, the presence of that little 
woman made the strangest difference in the 
mom. She took note of various evidences 
of litter and untidiness with her mind’s eye 


as she examined the lamp. She had drawn 
a long breath of relief when she put the let- 
ter into Arthur’s hand. The sense of light- 
ened responsibility seemed almost to relieve 
her anxiety as well. She held the chimney 
of the lamp in her hand, when an exclama- 
tion from her son called her back to the con- 
sideration of that grievous question. She 
turned to him with a sudden deepening of 
all the lines in her face. 

“ O Arthur dear ! don’t you think it 
may be an enemy ? don’t you think it looks 
like some cruel trick? You don’t believe 
it’s true ? ” 

“ Mother, have you an enemy in the 
world ? ” cried Vincent, with an almost bit- 
ter affectionateness. “ Is there anybody li\> 
ing that would take pleasure in wounding 
you ? ” 

“No, dear ; but Mr. Fordham might have 
one,” said the widow. “ He is not like you 
or your dear father, Arthur. He looks as 
if he might have been in the army, and had 
seen a great deal of life. That is what has 
been a great consolation to me. A man like 
that, you know, dear, is sure to have ene- 
mies ;^so very different from our quiet way 
of life,” said Mrs. Vincent, holding up the 
chimney of the lamp, and standing a little 
higher than her natural five feet, with a 
simple consciousness of that grandeur of ex- 
perience ; “ some one that wished him ill 
might have got some one else to write the 
letter. Hush, Arthur, here is the maid with 
the tea.” 

The maid with the tea pushed in, bearing 
her tray into a scene which looked very 
strange to her awakened curiosity. The 
minister stood before the fire vdth the letter 
in his hand, narrowly examining it, seal, 
postmark, handwriting, even paper. He 
did not look like the same man who had 
come up-stairs three steps at a time, in the 
glow and exhilaration of hope, scarcely an 
hour ago. His teeth were set, and his face 
pale. On the table the smoky lamp blazed 
into the dim air, unregulated by the chim- 
ney, which Mrs. Vincent was nervously rub- 
bing with her handkerchief before she put it 
on. The little maid, with her round eyes, 
set down the tray upon the table with an 
answering thrill of excitement and curiosity. 
There was “somethink to do” with the 
minister and his unexpected visitor. Vin- 
cent himself took no notice of the girl ; but 


3^58 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


liis mother, with feminine instinct, proceeded 
to disarm this possible observer. Mrs. Vin- 
cent knew well, by long experience, that 
when the landlady happens to be one of the 
flock, it is as well that the pastor should 
keep the little shocks and crises of his exist- 
ence studiously to himself. 

“ Does it always smoke ? ” said the gentle 
Jesuit, addressing the little maid. 

The efiect of so sudden and discomposing 
a question, at a moment when the person 
addressed was staring with all her soul at 
the minister, open-mouthed and open-eyed, 
maybe better imagined than described. 
The girl gave a start and stifled exclama- 
tion, and made all the cups rattle on the 
tray as she set it dov/n. Did what smoke ? 
— the chimney, or the minister, or the land- 
lady’s husband down-stairs ? 

“ Does it always smoke ? ” repeated Mrs. 
Vincent, calmly, putting on the chimney. 
“ I don’t think it would if you were very 
exact in putting this on. Look here : al- 
ways at this height, don’t you see ; and now 
it burns perfectly well.” 

“Yes, ma’am; I’ll tell missis, ma’am,” 
said the girl, backing out, with somcAlarm, 
Mrs. Vincent sat down at the table with all 
the satisfaction of success and conscious vir- 
tue. Her son, for his part, flung himself 
into the easy-chair which she had given up, 
and stared at her with an impatience and 
wonder which he could not restrain. 

“ To think you should talk about the lamp 
at such a time, or notice it at all, indeed, if it 
smoked like fifty chimneys ! ” he exclaimed, 
with a tone of annoyance ; “ why, mother, 
this is life or death.” 

“ Yes, yes, my dear ! ” said the mother, a 
little mortified in her turn; “but it does 
not do to let strangers see when you are in 
trouble. O Arthur, my own boy, you must 
not get into any difficulty here. I know 
what gossip is in a congregation ; you never 
would bear half of what your poor dear 
papa did,” said the widow, with tears in her 
eyes, laying her soft old fingers upon the 
young man’s impatient hand. “You have 
more of my quick temper, Arthur; and 
whatever you do, dear, you must not expose 
yourself to be talked of. You are all we 
have in the world. You must be your sis- 
ter’s protector ; for oh, if this should be 
true, what a poor protector her mother has 


been ! And, dear boy, tell me, what are w'e 
to do ? ” 

“Ilad he any friends?” asked Vincent, 
half sullenly ; for he did feel an instinctive 
desire to blame somebody, and nobody 
seemed so blamable as the mother, who had 
admitted a doubtful person into her house. 
“Did he know anybody — in Lonsdale, or 
anywhere ? Did he never speak of his 
friends ? ” 

“ He had been living abroad,” said Mrs. 
Vincent,, slowly. “ He talked of gentlemen 
sometimes, at Baden, and Hamburg, and 
such places. I am afraid you would think 
it very silly, and— and perhaps wrong, Ar- 
thur ; but he seemed to know so much of 
the world — so difierent from our quiet way 
of life — that being so nice and good and re- 
fined himself with it all — I am afraid it was 
rather an attraction to Susan. It v/as so 
dififerent to what she was used with, my dear. 
We used to think a man who had seen so 
much, and known so many temptations, and 
kept his nice simple tastes through it all — 
oh dear, dear ! if it is true, I was never so 
deceived in all my life.” 

“ But you have not told me,” said Arthur, 
morosely, “ if he had any friends ? ” 

“Nobody in Lonsdale,” said Mrs. Vin- 
cent. “ He came to see some young rela- 
tive at school in the neighborhood ” 

At this point Mrs. Vincent broke off with 
a half scream, interrupted by a violent start 
and exclamation from her son, who jumped 
off his seat, and began to pace up and down 
the room in an agitation which she could 
not comprehend. This start entirely over- 
powered his mother. Her overwrought 
nerves and feelings relieved themselves in 
tears. She got up, trembling, approached 
the young man, put her hand, which shook, 
through his arm, and implored him, crying 
softly all the time, to tell her what he feared, 
wffiat he thought, what was the matter ? 
Poor Vincent’s momentary ill-humor de- 
serted him : he began to realize all the com- 
plications of the position ; but he could not 
resist the sight of his mother’s tears. He 
led her back gently to the easy-chair, poured 
out for her a cup of the neglected tea, and 
restrained himself for her sake. It w^as 
while she took this much-needed refresh- 
ment that he unfolded to her the story of 
the helpless strangers whom, only the 


SALEM CHAPEL. I59 


night before, he had committed to her 
care. 

“ The mother you shall see for yourself 
to-morrow. I can’t tell what she is, except 
a lady, though in the strangest circum- 
stances,” said Vincent. “ She has some rea- 
son — I cannot tell what — for keeping her 
child out of the father’s hands. She ap- 
pealed to me to let her send it to you, be- 
cause he had been at Lonsdale already, and 
I could not refuse. His name is Colonel 
Mildmay; he has been at Lonsdale 5 did 
you hear of such a man ? ” 

Mrs. Vincent shook her head — her face 
grew more and more troubled. “I don’t 
know about reasons for keeping a child from 
its father,” she said, still shaking her head. 
“My dear, dear boy, I hope no designing 
woman has got a hold upon you. Why did 
you start so, Arthur ? what had Mr. Ford- 
ham to do with the child? Susan would 
open my letter, of course, and I dare say she 
will make them very comfortable ; but, Ar- 
thur dear, though I don’t blame you, it was 
very imprudent. Is Colonel Mildmay the 
lady’s husband ? or — or What ? Dear boy, 
you should have thought of Susan — Susan, 
a young girl, must not be mixed up with 
anybody of doubtful character. It was all 
your good heart, I know, but it was very 
imprudent, to be sure.” 

Vincent laughed, in a kind of agony of 
mingled distress, anxiety, and strange mo- 
mentary amusement. His mother and he 
were both blaming each other for the same 
fault. Both of them had equally yielded to 
kind feelings, and the natural impulse of 
generous hearts, without any consideration 
of prudence. But his mistake could not be 
attended by any consequences a hundredth 
part so serious as hers. 

“In the mean time, we must do some- 
thing,” he said. “ If he has no friends, he 
has at least an address, I suppose. Susan ” 

and a flush of indignation and affectionate 

anger crossed the young man’s face — “ Su- 
san, no doubt, writes to the rascal. Susan ! 
my sister ! Good Heaven ! ” 

“Arthur!” said Mrs. Vincent. “Your 
dear papa always disapproved of such ex- 
clamations : he said they were just a kind 
of oath, though people did not think so. 
And you ought not to call him a rascal with- 
out proof— indeed, it is very sinful to come 
to such hasty judgments. Yes, I have got 


the address written down — it is in my 
pocket-book. But what shall you do ? 
Will you write to himself, Arthur ? or what ? 
To be sure, it would be best to go to him 
and settle it at once.” 

“ O mother, have a little prudence now, ” 
cried the afflicted minister ; “ if he were base 
enough to propose marriage to Susan (con- 
found him ! that’s not an oath — my father 
himself would have said as much) under such 
circumstances, don’t you think he has the 
courage to tell a lie as well ? I shall go up 
to town, and to his address to-morrow, and 
see what is to be found there. You must 
rest in the mean time. Writing is out of the 
question ; what is to be done, I must do — 
and without a moment’s loss of time.” 

The mother took his hand again, and put 
her handkerchief to her eyes — “ God bless 
my dear boy,” she said, with a mother’s 
tearful admiration — “ Oh, what a thing for 
me, Arthur, that you are grown up and a 
man, and able to do what is right in such a 
dreadful difficulty as this ! You put me in 
mind more and more of your dear father 
when you settle so clearly what is to be 
done. He was always ready to act when I 
used to be-in a flutter, which was best. 
And, oh, how good has the Father of the 
fatherless been to me in giving me such a 
son ! ” 

“ Ah, mother,” said the young minister, 
“ you gave premature thanks before, when 
you thought the Father of the fatherless had 
brought poor Susan a happy lot. Do you 
say the same now ? ” 

“Always the same, Arthur dear,” cried 
his mother with tears — “ always the same. 
If it is even so, is it me, do you think, or is 
it Him that knows best ? ” 

After this the agitation and distress of 
the first meeting gradually subsided. That 
mother, with all her geherous imprudence 
and innocence of heart, was, her son well 
knew, the tenderest, the most indulgent, the 
most sympathetic of all his friends. Though 
the little — the very little insight he had ob- 
tained into life and the world had made him 
think himself wiser than she was in some re- 
spects, nothing had ever come between them 
to disturb the boy’s half-adoring, half-pro- 
tecting love. He bethought himself of pro- 
viding for her comfort, as she sat looking at 
him in the easy-chair, with her eyes smiling 
on him through their tears, patiently sipping 


100 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


the tea, which was a cold and doubtful in- 
fusion, nothing like the fragrant lymph of 
home. He poked the fire till it blazed, and 
drew her chair towards it, and hunted up a 
footstool which he had himself kicked out 
of the way, under the sofa, a month before. 
When he looked at the dear tender fresh old 
face opposite to him, in that close white cap 
which even now, after the long fatiguing 
journey, looked fresher and purer than other 
people’s caps and faces look at their best, a 
thaw came upon the young man’s heart. 
Nature awoke and yearned in him. A mo- 
mentary glimpse crossed his vision of a 
humble happiness long within his reach, 
which never till now, when it was about to 
become impossible forever, had seemed real 
or practicable, or even desirable before. 

“Mother, dear,” said Vincent, with a trem- 
ulous smile, “ you shall come here, Susan 
and you, to me ; and we shall all be together 
again — and comfort each other,” he added, 
with a deeper gravity still, thinking of his 
own lot. 

His mother did not answer in many words. 
She said, “ My own boy ! ” softly, following 
him with her eyes. It was hard, even with 
Susan’s dreadful danger before her, to help 
being tearfully happy in seeing him again — 
in being his guest — in realizing the full 
strength of his manhood and independence. 
She gave herself up to that feeling of mater- 
nal pride and consolation as she once more 
dried the tears which would come, notwith- 
standing all her efibrts. Then he sat down 
beside her, and resigned himself to that con- 
fidential talk which can rarely be but between 
members of the same family. He had un- 
burdened his mind unconsciously in his let- 
ters about Tozer and the deacons ; and it 
cannot be told what a refreshment it was to 
be able to utter roundly in words his senti- 
ments on all those -subjects. The power of 
saying it out with no greater hindrance than 
her mild remonstrances, mingled, as they 
were, with questions which enabled him to 
complete his sketches, and smiles of amuse- 
ment at his descriptive powers, put him ac- 
tually in better humor with Salem. He felt 
remorseful and charitable after he had said 
his worst. 

“ And are you sure, dear,” said Mrs. Vin- 
cent, at last resuming the subject nearest her 
heart, “ that you can go away to-morrow 
without neglecting any duty? You must 


not neglect a duty, Arthur, not even for Su- 
san’s sake. Whatever happens to us, you 
must keep right.” 

“ I have no duty to detain me,” said Vin- 
cent hastily. Then a sudden glow came over 
the young man, a flush of happiness which 
stole upon him like a thief, and brightened 
his own personal firmament with a secret 
unacknowledgable delight ; “ but I must re- 
turn early,” he added, with a momentary 
hesitation — “ for if you wont think it unkind 
to leave you, mother, I am engaged to din- 
ner. I should scarcely like to miss it,” he 
concluded, after another pause, tying knots 
in his handkerchief, and taking care not to 
look at her as he spoke. 

“To dinner, Arthur? I thought your 
people only gave teas,” said Mrs. Vincent, 
with a smile. 

“ The Salem people do ; but this — is not 
one of the Salem people,” said the minister, 
still hesitating. “ In fact, it would be un- 
gracious of me not to go, and cowardly, too 
— for that curate, I believe, is to meet 
me — and Lady Western would naturally 
think ” 

“Lady Western!” said Mrs. Vincent, 
with irrestrainable pleasure, “ is that one of 
the great people in Carlingford ? ” The 
good woman wiped her eyes again with the 
very tenderest and purest demonstration of 
that adoration of rank which is said to be an 
English instinct. “ I don’t mean to be fool- 
ish, dear,” she said, apologetically : “ I know 
these distinctions of society are not worth 
your caring about ; but to see my Arthur- 

appreciated as he should be, is ” She 

could not find words to say what it was — she 
wound up with a little sob. What with 
trouble and anxiety, and pride and delight, 
and bodily fatigue added to all, tears came 
easiest that night. 

Vincent did not say whether or not these 
distinctions of society were w^orth caring 
about. He sat abstractedly, untying the 
knots in his handkerchief, with a faint smile 
on his face. Then, while that pleasurable 
glow remained, he escorted his mother to his 
own sleeping-room, which he had given up 
to her, and saw that her fire burned brightly, 
and that all was comfortable. W’hen he re- 
turned to poke his solitary fire, it was some 
time before he took out the letter which had 
disturbed his peace. The smile had died 
away first by imperceptible degrees from his 


SALEM 

face. He gradually erected himself out of 
the meditative lounge into which he had 
fallen ; then, with a little start, as if throw- 
ing dreams away, he took out and examined 
the letter. The more he looked at it, the 
graver and deeper became the anxiety in his 
face. It had every appearance of being gen- 
uine in its bad writing and doubtful spell- 
ing. And Vincent started again with an un- 
explainable thrill of alarm when he thought 
how utterly unprotected his mother’s sudden 
journey had left that little house in Lonsdale. 
Susan had no warning, no safeguard. He 
started up in momentary fright, but as sud- 
denly sat down again with a certain indigna- 
tion at his own thoughts. Nobody could 
carry her off, or do any act of violence ; and 
as for taking advantage of her solitude, Su- 
san, a straightforward, simple-minded Eng- 
lish girl, was safe in her own pure sense of 
right. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Next morning Mr. Vincent got up early, 
with an indescribable commotion in all his 
thoughts. He was to institute inquiries which 
might be life or death to his sister, but yet 
could not keep his mind to the contemplation 
of that grave necessity. A flicker of private 
hope and expectation kept gleaming with 
uncertain light over the dark weight of anx- 
iety in his heart. He could not help, in the 
very deepest of his thoughts about Susan, 
breaking off now and then into a momentary 
digression, which suddenly carried him into 
Lady Western’s drawing-room, and startled 
his heart with a thrill of conscious delight, 
secret and exquisite, which he could neither 
banish nor deny. In and out, and round 
about that grievous doubt w'hich had sud- 
denly disturbed the quiet history of his fam- 
ily, this capricious fairy played, touching all 
his anxious thoughts with thrills of sweetness. 
It seemed an action involuntary to himself, 
and over which he had no power ; but it gave 
the young man an equally involuntary and 
causeless cheer and comfort. It did not 
seem possible that any dreadful discovery 
could be made that day, in face of the fact 
that he w’as to meet Her that night. 

When he met his mother at breakfast, the 
recollection of Mrs. Hilyard and the charge 
she had committed to him, came to his mind 
again. No doubt Susan would take the wan- 
derers in — no doubt they were as safe in the 
cottage as it was possible to be in a humble 

CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


CHAPEL. 101 

inviolable English home surrounded by all 
the strength of neighbors and friends, and 
the protection of a spotless life which every- 
body knew ; but yet That was not what 

his strange acquaintance had expected or 
bargained for. He felt as if he had broken 
faith with her when he realized his mother’s 
absence from her own house. Yet somehow 
he felt a certain hesitation in broaching the 
subject, and unconsciously prepared himself 
for doubts and reluctance. The certainty of 
this gave a forced character to the assumed 
easiness with which he spoke. 

“You will go to see Mrs. Hilyard,” he 
said, “ I owe it to her to explain that you 
were absent before her child went there. They 
will be safe enough at home, no doubt, with 
Susan ; but still, you know, it would have 
been different had you been there.” 

“ Yes, Arthur,” said Mrs. Vincent, with 
an indescribable dryness in her voice. 

“You will find her a very interesting 
woman,” said her son, instinctively contend- 
ing against that unexpressed doubt, “ the 
strangest contrast to her surroundings. The 
very sound of her voice carries one a thou- 
sand miles from Salem. Had I seen her in 
a palace, I doubt whether I should have been 
equally impressed by her. You will be in- 
terested in spite of yourself.” 

“ It is, as you say, very strange, Arthur,” 
said Mrs. Vincent — the dryness in her voice 
increasing to the extent of a short cough ; 
“ when does your train start ? ” 

“Not till eleven,” said Vincent, looking 
at his watch ; “ but you must please me, and 
go to see her, mother.” 

“ That reminds me, dear,” said Mrs. Vin- 
cent, hurriedly, “ that now I am here, little 
as it suits my feelings, you must take me to 
see some of your people, Arthur. Mrs. Tuf- 
ton, and perhaps the Tozers, you know. They 
might not like to hear that your mother had 
been in Carlingford, and had not gone to see 
them. It will be hard work visiting stran- 
gers while I am in this dreadful anxiety, but 
I must not be the means of bringing you into 
any trouble with your flock.” 

“ Oh, never mind my flock,” said Vincent, 
with some impatience ; “ put on your bonnet, 
and come and see her, mother.” 

“ Arthur, you are going by the first train,” 
said his mother. 

“ There is abundant time, and it is not too 
early for her,” persisted the minister. 

11 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


162 

But it was not so easy to conquer that 
meek little woman. “ I feel very much fa- 
tigued to-day,” she said, turning her eyes 
mild but invincible, with the most distinct 
contradiction of her words to her son’s face, 

if it had not been my anxiety to have all I 
could of you, Arthur, I should not have got 
up to-day. A journey is a very serious mat- 
ter, dear, for an old woman. One does not 
feel it so much at first,” continued this plau- 
sible defendant ; still with her mild eyes on 
her son’s face, secure in the perfect reason- 
ableness of her plea, yet not unwilling that 
he should perceive it was a pretence, “ it is 
the next day one feels it. I shall lie down 
on the sofa, and rest when you are gone.” 

And, looking into his mother’s soft eyes, 
the young Nonconformist retreated, and 
made no more attempts to shake her. Not 
the invulnerability of the fortress alone dis- 
' couraged him — though that was mildly obdu- 
rate, and proof to argument — but a certain 
uneasiness in the thought of that meeting, 
an inclination to postpone it, and stave off 
the thought of all that might follow, surprised 
himself in his own mind. * AVhy he should 
be afraid of the encounter, or how any com- 
plication could arise out of it, he could not 
by any means imagine, but such was the in- 
stinctive sentiment in his heart. 

Accordingly, he went up to London by the 
train, leaving Mrs. Hilyard unwarned, and 
his mother reposing on the sofa, from which, 
it is sad to say, she rose a few minutes after 
he was gone, to refresh herself by tidying 
his bookcase and looking over all his linen 
and stockings, in which last she found a very 
wholesome subject of contemplation, which 
relieved the pressure of her thoughts much 
more effectually than could have been done 
by the rest which she originally proposed. 
Arthur, for his part, went up to London with 
a certain nervous thrill of anxiety rising in 
his breast as he approached the scene and i 
the moment of his inquiries ; though it was 
still only by intervals that he realized the 
momentous nature of those inquiries, on the 
result of which poor Susan’s harmless girlish 
life, all unconscious of the danger.that threat- 
ened it, hung in the balance. Poor Susan ! 
just then going on with a bride’s prepara- 
tions for the approaching climax of her 
youthful existence. Was she, indeed, really 
a bride, with nothing but truth and sweet i 


honor in the contract that bound her, oi was 
she the sport of a villanous pastime that 
would break her heart, and might have ship- 
wrecked her fair fame and innocent exist- 
ence ? Her brother set his teeth hard as he 
asked himself that question. Minister as he 
was, it might have been a dangerous chance 
for Fordham, had he come at that moment 
without ample proofs of guiltlessness in the 
Nonconformist’s way. 

When he got to town, he whirled as fast 
as it was possible to go, to the address 
where Susan’s guileless lettbrs were sent 
almost daily. It was in a street off Pic- 
cadilly, full of lodging-houses, and all man- 
ner of hangers-on and ministrants to the 
world of fashion. He found the house di- 
rectly, and was somewhat comforted to find 
it really an actual house, and not a niyth or 
Doubtful Castle, or a post-office window. 
He knocked with the real knocker, and heard 
the bell peal through the comparative silence 
in the street, and insensibly cheered up, and 
began to look forward to the appearance of 
a real Mr. Fordham, with unquestionable 
private history and troops of friends. A 
quiet house, scrupulously clean, entirely re- 
spectable, yet distinct in all its features of 
lodging-house; a groom in the area below, 
talking to an invisible somebody, also a 
man, who seemed to be cleaning somebody 
else’s boots ; up-stairs, at the first-fioor bal- 
cony, a smart little tiger making a fashion 
of watering plants, and actually doing his 
best to sprinkle the conversational groom 
below ; altogether a superabundance of male 
attendants, quite ineompatible with the in- 
tegrity of the small dwelling-place as a pri- 
vate house. Another man, who evidently 
belonged to the place, opened the door, in- 
terrupting Vincent suddenly in his observa- 
tions — an elderly man, half servant, half 
master, in reality the proprietor of the place, 
i ready either to wait or be waited on as occa- 
sion might require. Turning with a little 
start from his inspection of the attei dant 
circumstances, Vincent asked, did Mr. Ford- 
ham live there ? 

The man made a momentary but visible 
pause ; whatever it might betoken, it was 
not ignorance. He did not answer with the 
alacrity of frank knowledge or simple non- 
information. He paused, then said, “ Mr. 
i Fordham, sir ? ” looking intently at Vincent, 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


and taking in every particular of his appear- 
ance, dress, and professional looks, with one 
rapid glance. 

“ Mr. Ford ham,” repeated Vincent, “ does 
he live here ? ” 

Once more, the man perused him, swiftly 
and cautiously. “ No, sir, he does not live 
here,” was the second response. 

“ I was told this was his address,” said 
Vincent. “ I perceive you are not ignorant 
of him; where does he live ? I know his let- 
ters come here.” 

“ There are a many gentlemen in the 
house in the course of the season,” answered 
the man, still on the alert to find out Vin- 
cent’s meaning by his looks — “sometimes 
letters keep on coming months after they 
are gone. When we knows their home ad- 
dress, sir, we sends them ; when we don’t we 
keeps them by us till we see if any owner 
turns up. Gen’leman of the name of Ford- 
ham ? — do you happen to know, sir, what 
part o’ the country he comes from ? There’s 
the Lincolnshire Fordhams as you know, sir, 
and the Northumberland Fordhams ; but 
there’s no gen’leman of that name lives 
here.” 

“ I am sure you know perfectly whom I 
mean,” said Vincent, in his heat and impa- 
tience. “I don’t mean Mr. Fordham any! 
harm — I only want to see him, or to get j 
some information about him, if he is not to | 
be seen. Tell me where he does live, or tell ' 
, me which of his friends is in town, that I 
may ask them. I tell you I don’t mean Mr. 
Fordham any harm.” 

“No, sir ? — nor I don’t know as anybody 
means any harm,” said the man, once more 
examining Vincent’s appearance. “ What 
was it as you were wishing to know ? Though 
I aint acquainted with the gen’leman myself, 
the missis or some of the people may be. 
We have a many coming and going, and I 
might confuse a name. What was it as you 
1 were wishful to know ? ” 

“ I wish to see Mr. Fordham,” said Vin- 
cent, impatiently. 

“ I have told you, sir, he don’t live here,” 
said the guardian of the house. 

“ Then, look here ; you don’t deceive me, 
remember. I can see you know all about 
him,” said Vincent ; “ and, as I tell you, I 
mean him no harm ; answer me one or two 
simple questions, and I will either thank or 
I reward you as you like best. In the first 


163 

place, is this Mr. Fordham a married man ; 
and has he ever gone by another name ? ” 

As he asked these questions the man 
grinned in his face. “ Lord bless you, sir, 
we don’t ask no such questions here. A gen- 
’leman comes and has his rooms, and pays, 
and goes away, and gives such name as he 
pleases. I don’t ask a certificate of baptism, 
not if all’s right in the pay department. W e 
don’t take ladies in, being troublesome ; but 
if a man was to have a dozen wives, what 
could we know about it ? Sorry to disoblige a 
clergyman, sir ; but as I don’t know nothing 
about Mr. Fordham, perhaps you’ll excuse 
me, as it’s the busiest time of the day.” 

“ Well, then, my good man,” said Vincent, 
taking out his purse, “ tell me what friend 
he has that I can apply to ; you will do me 
the greatest service, and I ” 

“ Sorry to disoblige a clergyman, as I 
say,” said the man, angrily ; “ but, begging 
your pardon, I can’t stand jabbering here. 
I never was a spy on a gen’leman, and never 
will be. If you want to know, you’ll have to 
find out. Time’s money to me.” 

With which the landlord of No. 10 Name- 
less Street, Piccadilly, shut the door ab- 
ruptly in Vincent’s face. A postman was 
audibly approaching at the moment. Could 
that have anything to do with the sudden 
breaking off of the conference ? The minis- 
ter, exasperated, yet becoming more anx- 
ious, stood for a moment in doubt, facing 
the blank closed door. Then, desperate, 
turned round suddenly, and faced the ad- 
vancing Mercury. He had no letters for 
No. 10 ; he was hastening past, altogether 
regardless of Vincent’s look of inquiry. 
When he was addressed, however, the post- 
man responded with immediate directness. 

“ Fordham, sir — yes — a gentleman of that 
name lives at No. 10 — leastways he has his 
letters there — No. 10 — where you have just 
been, sir.” 

“ But they say he doesn’t live there,” said 
Vincent. 

“ Can’t tell, sir — has his letters there,” 
said the public servant, decidedly. 

More than ever perplexed, Vincent fol- 
lowed the postman to pursue his inquiries. 

“ What sort of a house is it ? ” he asked. 

“ Highly respectable house, sir,” answered 
the terse and decisive functionary, perform- 
ing an astounding rap next door. 

In an agony of impatience and uncertainty. 


164 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD 


the young man lingered opposite the house, 
conscious of a helplessness and impotence 
which made him furious with himself. That 
he ought to he able to get to the bottom of 
it was clear ; but that he was as far as pos- 
sible from knowing how to do that same, or 
where to pursue his inquiries, was indisput- 
able. One thing was certain, that Mr. Ford- 
ham did not choose to be visible at this ad- 
dress to which his letters were sent, and that 
it was hopeless to attempt to extract any in- 
formation on the subject by such frank in- 
quiries as the minister had already made. 
He took a half-hour’s walk, and thought it 
over with no great enlightenment on the sub- 
ject. Then, coming back, applied once more 
at the highly respectable, uncommunicative 
door. He had entertained hopes that an- 
other and more manageable adherent of the 
house might possibly appear this time — a 
maid, or impressionable servitor of some de- 
scription, and had a little piece of gold ready 
for the propitiatory tip in his hand. His 
hopes were, however, put to flight by the 
appearance of the same face, increased in 
respectability and composure, by the fact 
that the owner had thrown off the jacket in 
which he had formerly been invested, and 
now appeared in a solemn black coat, the es- 
sence of respectable and dignified servitude. 
He fixed his eyes severely upon Vincent as 
soon as he opened the door. He was evi- 
dently disgusted by this return to the charge. 

“Look here,” said Vincent, somewhat 
startled and annoyed to find himself con- 
fronted by the same face which had formerly 
defied him ; “ could you get a note con- 
veyed from me to Mr. Fordham ? — the post- 
man says he has his letters here.” 

“ If he gets his letters here, they come by 
the post,” said the man insolently. “ There’s 
a post-office round the corner, but I don’t 
keep one here. If ope reaches him another 
will. It aiut nothing to me.” 

“ But it is a great deal to me,” said Vin- 
cent, with involuntary earnestness. “ You 
have preserved his secret faithfully, what- 
ever it may be ; but it surely can’t be any 
harm to convey a note to Mr. Fordham. 
Most likely, when he hears my name,” said 
the young man, with a little consciousness 
that what he said was more than he be- 
lieved, “ he will see me ; and I have to 
leave town this evening. You will do me a 
great service if you will save me the delay 


of the post, and get it delivered at once. 
And you may do Mr. Fordham a service 
too.” 

The man looked with less certainty in 
Vincent’s face. “ Seems to me some people 
don’t know what No means, w'hen it’s said,’' 
he replied, wdth a certain relenting in his 
voice. “ There’s things as a gen’leman 
ought to know, even enough — something 
happened in the family or so ; but you see, 
he don’t live here ; and since you stand it 
out so, I don’t mind saying that he’s a gen- 
’leman as can’t be seen in town to-day, see- 
ing he’s in the country, as I’m informed, on 
urgent private affairs. It’s uncommon kind 
of a clergyman, and a stranger, to take such 
an interest in my house,” continued the fel- 
low, grinning spitefully ; “ but what I say 
first I say last — he don’t live here.” 

“ And he is not in town,” asked Vincent 
eagerly, without noticing the insolence of 
the speech. The man gradually closed the 
door upon himself till he had shut it, and 
stood outside, facing his persistent visitor. 

“ In town or but of town,” he said, fold- 
ing his arms upon his chest, and surveying 
Vincent with all the insolence of a lackey 
who knows he has to deal with a man de- 
barred by public opinion from the gratifying 
privilege of knocking him down, “ there aint 
no more information to be got here.” 

Such was the conclusion of Vincent's at- 
tempted investigation. He went away at 
once, scarcely pausing to hear this speech 
out, to take the only means that presented 
themselves now; and going into the fii'st 
stationer’s shop in his way, wrote a note 
entreating Mr. Fordham to meet him, and 
giving a friend’s address in London, as well 
as his own in Caiiingford, that he might be 
communicated with instantly. When he 
had written and posted this note, Vincent 
proceeded to investigate the Directory and 
all the red and blue books he could lay his 
hands upon, for the name of Fordham. It 
was not a plentiful name, but still it oc- 
curred sufficiently often to perplex and con- 
fuse him utterly. When he had looked over 
the list of Fordham s in London, sufficiently 
long to give himself an intense headache, 
and to feel his undertaking entirely hope- 
less, he came to a standstill. What was to 
be done ? He had no clue, nor the hope of 
any, to guide him through this labyrinth ; 
but he had no longer any trust in the honor 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


of the man whom his mother had so rashly 
received, and to whom Susan had given her 
heart. By way of the only precaution which 
occurred to him, he wrote a short note to 
Susan, begging her not to send any more 
letters to Mr. Fordham until her mother’s 
return ; and desiring her not to be alarmed 
by this prohibition, but to be very careful 
of herself, and wait for an explanation when 
Mrs. Vincent should return. He thought 
he himself would accompany his mother 
home. The note was written, as Vincent 
thought, in the most guarded terms j but in 
reality was such an abrupt, alarming per- 
formance, as was sure to drive a sensitive 
girl into the wildest fright and uncertainty. 
Having eased his conscience by this, he went 
back to the railway, hnd returned to Car- 
lingford. Night had fallen before he reached 
home. Under any other circumstances, he 
would have encountered his mother after 
such an ineffectual enterprise, conscious as 
he was of carrying back nothing but height- 
ened suspicion, with very uncomfortable 
feelings, and would have been in his own 
■person too profoundly concerned about this 
dreadful danger which menaced his only 
sister, to be able to rest or occupy himself 
about other things. But the fact was, that 
whenever he relapsed into the solitary car- 
riage in which he travelled to Carlingford, 
and when utterly quiet and alone, wrapped 
in the haze of din and smoke and speed 
which abstracts railway travellers from all 
the world, — gave himself up to thought, the 
rosy hue of his own hopes came stealing 
over him unawares. Now and then he woke 
up, as men wake up from a doze, and made 
a passing snatch at his fears. But again 
and again they eluded his grasp, and the 
indefinite brightness w'hich had no founda- 
tion in reason, swallowed up everything 
which interfered with its power. The effect 
of this was to make the young man preter- 
naturally solemn when he entered the room 
where his mother awaited him. He felt 
the reality of the fear so much less than he 
ought to do, that it was necessary to put on 
twice the appearance. Had he really been 
as deeply anxious and alarmed as he should 
have been, he would naturally have tried to 
ease and lighten the burden of the discovery 
to his mother ; feeling it so hazily as he did, 
no such precautions occurred to him. She 
rose up when he came in, with a face which 


165 

gradually paled out of all its color as he 
approached. When he was near enough to 
hold out his hand to her, Mrs. Vincent was 
nearly fainting. “ Arthur,” she cried, in a 
scarcely audible voice, “ God have pity upon 
us ; it is true ; I can see it in your face.” 

“ Mother, compose yourself. I have no 
evidence that it is true. I have discovered 
nothing,” cried Vincent, in alarm. 

The widow dropped heavily into her chair, 
and sobbed aloud. “ I can read it in your 
face,” she said. “ 0 my dear boy, have you 
seen that — that villain? Does he confess 
it ? Oh, my Susan, my Susan ! I will never 
forgive myself ; I have killed my child.” 

From this passion it was difficult to re- 
cover her, and Vincent had to represent so 
strongly the fact that he had ascertained 
nothing certain, and that, for anything he 
could tell, Fordham might still prove him- 
self innocent, that he almost persuaded his 
own mind in persuading hers. 

“ His letters might be taken in at a place 
where he did not live for convenience’s 
sake,” said Vincent. “The man might 
think me a dun, or something disagreeable. 
Fordham himself, for anything we can tell, 
may be very angry about it. Cheer up, 
mother ; things are no worse than they were 
last night. I give you my word I have 
made no discovery, and perhaps to-morrow 
may bring us a letter clearing it all up.” 

“ Ah ! Arthur, you are so young and 
hopeful. It is different with me, who have 
seen so many terrors come true,” said the 
mother who notwithstanding was comforted. 
As for Vincent, he felt neither the danger 
nor the suspense. His whole soul was en- 
grossed with the fact that it was time to 
dress ; and^ it was with a little conscious 
sophistry that he himself made the best of 
it, and excused himself for his indifference. 

“I can’t bear to leave you, mother, in 
such suspense and distress,” he said, looking 
at his watch ; “ but— I have to be at Lady 
Western’s at half-past six.” 

Mrs. Vincent looked up with an expres- 
sion of stupefied surprise and pain for a 
moment, then brightened all at once. “ My 
dear, I have laid out all your things,” she 
said, with animation. “ Do you think I 
would let you miss it, Arthur ? N ever mind 
talking to me. I shall hear all about it 
when you come home to-night. Now go, 
dear, or you will be late. I will come and 


166 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


talk to you when you are dressing, if you 
don’t mind your mother? Well, perhaps 
not. I will stay here, and you can call me 
when you are ready, and I will bring you a 
cup of tea. I am sure you are tired, what 
with the fatigue and what with the anxiety. 
But you must try to put it off your mind, 
and enjoy yourself to-night.” 

“Yes, mother,” said Vincent, hastening 
away; the tears were in her gentle eyes 
when she gave him that unnecessary advice. 
She pressed his hands fast in hers when he 
left her at last, repeating it, afraid in her 
own heart that this trouble had spoilt all the 
brightness of the opening hopes which she 
perceived with so much pride and joy. 
When he was gone, she sat down by the sol- 
itary fire, and cried over her Susan in an 
utter forlornness and helplessness, which 
only a woman, so gentle, timid, and unable 
to struggle for herself, could feel. Her son, 
in the mean time, walked down Grange 
Lane, first with a momentary shame at his 
own want of feeling, but soon with an entire 
forgetfulness both of the shame and the sub- 
ject of it, absorbed in thoughts of his recep- 
tion there. With a palpitating heart he 
entered the dark garden, now noiseless and 
chill in winterly decay, and gazed at the 
lighted windows which had looked like dis- 
tant planets to him the last time he saw 
them. He lingered looking at them, now 
that the moment approached so near. A 
remembrance of his former disappointment 
went to his heart with a momentary pang 
as he hesitated on the edge of his present 
happiness. Another moment and he had 
thrown himself again, with a degree of sup- 
pressed excitement wonderful to think of, 
upon the chances of his fate. * 

Not alarming chances, so far as could be 
predicated from the scene. A small room, 
the smaller half of that room which he had 
seen full of the pretty crowd of the summer- 
party, the folding-doors closed, and a cur- 
tain drawn across them ; a fire burning 
brightly ; groups of candles softly lighting 
the room in clusters upon the wall, and 
throwing a colorless soft illumination upon 
the pictures of which Lady Western was so 
proud. She herself, dropped amid billows 
of dark blue silk and clouds of black lace in 
a low easy-chair by the side of the fire, 
smiled at Vincent, and held out her hand to 
him without rising, with a sweet cordiality 


and friendliness which rapt the young man 
into paradise. Though Lucy Wodehouse 
was scarcely less pretty than the young 
Dowager, Mr. Vincent saw her as if he saw • 
her not, and still less did he realize the 
presence of Miss AVodehouse, who was the 
shadow to all this brightness. He took the 
chair which Lady AVestern pointed to him 
by her side. He did not want anybody to I 
speak, or anything to happen. The welcome 
was not given as to a stranger, but made 
him at once an intimate and familiar friend 
of the house. At once all his dreams were 
realized. The sweet atmosphere was tinged 
with the perfumy breath which always sur- 
rounded Her ; the room, which was so fan- 
ciful and yet so homelike, seemed a reflec- 
tion of her to his bewildered eyes ; and the 
murmur of soft sound, as these two lovely 
creatures spoke to each other, made the 
most delicious climax to the scene ; although 
the moment before he had been afraid lest 
the sound of a voice should break the spell. 

But the spell w^as not to be broken that 
night. Mr. AVentworth came in a few mo- 
ments after him, and was received -with equal 
sweetness ; but still the young Nonconform 
ist was not jealous. It was he whose arm 
Lady AVestern appropriated, almost without 
looking at him as she did so, when they 
went to dinner. She had put aside the 
forms which were intended to keep the outer 
world at arm’s length. It was as her own 
closest personal friends that the little party 
gathered around the little table, just large 
enough for them, which was placed before 
the fire in the great dining-room. Lady 
AVestern was not a brilliant talker, but Mr. 
Vincent thought her smallest observation 
more precious than any utterance of genius. 

He listened to her with a fervor which few 
people showed when listening to himy not- 
withstanding his natural eloquence ; but as 
to what ho himself said in reply, he was 
entirely oblivious, and spoke like a man in 
a dream. AVhen she clapped her pretty 
hands, and adjured the Churchman and the 
Nonconformist to fight out their quarrel, it 
was well for Vincent that Mr. AV entworth 
declined the controversy. The lecturer on 
Church and State “was hors de combat ; he 
was in charity with all men. The curate of 
St. Roque’s who — blind and infatuated 
man ! — thought Lucy AVodehouse the flower 
of Grange Lane, did not come in his •way. 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


He might pity him, but it was a sympathetic 
pity. Mr. Vincent took no notice when 
Miss Wodehouse launched tiny arrows of 
argument at him. She was the only mem- 
ber of the party who seemed to recollect his 
heresies in respect to Church and State — 
which, indeed, he had forgotten himself, and 
the state of mind which led to them. No 
such world existed now as that cold and 
lofty world which the young man of genius 
had seen glooming down upon, his life, and 
shutting jealous barriers against his prog- 
ress. The barriers were opened, the cold- 
ness gone — and he himself raised high on 
the sunshiny heights, where love and beauty 
had their perennial abode. He had gained 
nothing — changed in nothing from his for- 
mer condition : not even the golden gates of 
society had opened to the dissenting minis- 
ter ; but glorious enfranchisement had come 
to the young man’s heart. It was not Lady 
Western who had asked him to dinner — a 
distinction of which his mother was proud. 
It was the woman of all women who had 
brought him to her side, whose sweet eyes 
were sunning him over, whose voice thrilled 
to his heart. By her side he forgot all 
social distinctions, and all the stings con- 
tained in them. No prince could have 
reached more completely the ideal elevation 
and summit of youthful life. Ambition and 
its successes were vulgar in comparison. It 
was a poetic triumph amid the prose tumults 
and downfalls of life. 

When the two young men were left over 
their wine, a somewhat grim shadow fell 
upon the evening. The curate of St. Boque’s 
and the minister of Salem found it wonder- 
fully hard to get up a conversation. They 
discussed the advantages of retiring with 
the ladies as they sat glum and reserved op- 
posite each other — not by any means unlike, 
and by consequence, natural enemies. Mr. 
Wentworth thought it an admirable plan, 
much more sensible than the absurd custom 
which kept men listening to a parcel of old 
. fogies, who. retained the habits of the last 
generation ; and he proposed that they should 
i join the ladies— a proposal to which Vincent 
gladly acceded. When they returned to the 
’ drawing-room, Lucy Wodehouse was at the 
piano ; her sister sat at table with a pattern- 
book before her, doing some impossible pat- 
tern in knitting ; and Lady Western again 
sat languid and lovely by the fire, with her 


167 

beautiful hands in her lap, relieved from the 
dark background of the billowy blue dress 
by the delicate cambric and lace of her hand- 
kerchief. She was not doing anything, or 
looking as if she could do anything. She 
was leaning back in the low chair, with the 
rich folds of her dress sweeping the carpet, 
and her beautiful ungloved hands lying 
lightly across each other. She did not move 
when the gentlemen entered. She turned 
her eyes to them, and smiled those sweet 
welcoming smiles, which Vincent knew w^ell 
enough were for both alike, yet which made 
his heart thrill and beat. Wentworth (in- 
sensible prig !) went to Lucy’s side, and be- 
gan to talk to her over her music, now and 
then appealing to Miss Wodehouse. Vin- 
cent, whom no man hindered, and for whose 
happiness all the fates had conspired, in- 
vited by those smiling eyes, approached 
Lady Western with the surprised delight of 
a man miraculously blessed. He could not 
understand why he was permitted to be so 
happy. He drew a chair between her and 
the table, and shutting out the other group 
by turning his back upon them, had her all 
to himself. She never changed her position, 
nor disturbed her sweet indolence, by the 
least movement. The fire blazed no longer. 
The candles, softly burning against the wall, 
threw no very brilliant light upon this scene. 
To Vincent’s consciousness, bewildered as 
he was by the supreme delight of his posi- 
tion, they were but two in a new world, and 
neither thing nor person disturbed the un- 
imaginable bliss. But Miss Wodehouse, 
when she raised her eyes from her knitting, 
only saw the young Dowager leaning back 
in her chair, smiling the natural smiles of 
her sweet temper and kind heart upon the 
young stranger whom she had chosen to 
make & protege of. Miss Wodehouse silently 
concluded that perhaps it might be danger- 
ous for the young man, who knew no better, 
and that Lady Western always looked well 
in a blue dress. Such was the outside 
world’s interpretation of that triumphant 
hour of Vincent’s life. 

How it went on he never could tell. Soft 
questions spoken in that voice, which made 
everything eloquent, gently drew from him 
the particulars of his life, and sweet laugh- 
ter, more musical than that song of Lucy’s, 
to which the curate (dull clod!) gave all his 
attention, rang silvery peals over the name 


10g CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


of Tozer and the economics of Salem. P er- 
haps Lady .Western enjoyed the conversa- 
tion almost half as much as her worshipper 
did. She was amused, most delicate and 
difficult of all successes. She was pleased 
with the reverential devotion which had a 
freshness and tender humility conjoined with 
sensitive pride, which was novel to her, and 
more flattering than ordinary adoration. 
When he saw it amused her, the young man 
exerted himself to set forth his miseries with 
their ludicrous element fully developed. 
They were no longer miseries, they were 
happinesses which brought him those smiles. 
He said twice enough to turn him out of 
Salem, and make him shunned by all the 
connection. He forgot everything in life 
but the lovely creature beside him, and the 
means by which he could arouse her interest, 
and keep her ear a little longer. Such was 
the position of affairs, when Miss Wode- 
house came to the plain part of her pattern, 
where she could go on without counting ; 
and seeing Lady Western so much amused, 
became interested and set herself to listen 
too. By this time Vincent had come to 
more private concerns. 

“ I have been inquiring to-day after some 
one whom my mother knows, and whom I j 
am anxious to hear about,” said Vincent, j 
“ I cannot discover anything about him. It | 
is a'wild question to ask if you know him, 
but it is just possible ; there are such curi- 
ous encounters in life.” 

“ What is his name ? ” said Lady West- 
ern, with a smile as radiant as a sunbeam. 

“ His name is Fordham — Herbert Ford- 
ham — I do not know where he comes from, 
nor whether he is of any profession ; nor, 
indeed, anything but his name. I have been 
in town to-day P 

Here Vincent came to a sudden stop. He 
had withdrawn his eyes from that smile of 
hers for the moment. When he raised them 
again, the beautiful picture was changed as 
if by magic. Her eyes were fixed upon him 
dilated and almost wild. Her face was 
deadly pale. Her hands, which had been 
lying lightly crossed, grasped each other in 
a grasp of sudden anguish and self-control. 
He stopped short with a pang too bitter and 
strange for utterance. At that touch all his ! 
fancies dispersed into the air. He came to I 
himself strangely, with a sense of chill and 
desolation. In one instant, from the height i 


of momentary bliss, down to the miserable 
flat of conscious unimportance. Such a 
downfall was too much for man to endure 
without showing it. He stopped short at 
the aspect of her face. 

“ You have been in town to-day ? she 
repeated, pointedly, with white and trem- 
bling lips. 

“ And could hear nothing of him,” said 
Vincent, with a little bitterness. “ He was 
not to be heard of at his address.” 

“ Where was that ? ” asked Lady Western 
again, with the same intent and anxious 
gaze. 

Vincent, who was sinking down, down in 
hopeless circles of jealousy, miserable fierce 
rage and disappointment, answered, “ 10 
Nameless Street, Piccadilly,” without an un- 
necessary word. 

Lady Western uttered a little cry of ex- 
citement and wonder. She knew nothing 
of the black abyss into which her companion 
had fallen any more than she knew the 
splendid heights to which her favor had 
raised him ; but the sound of her own voice 
recalled her to herself. She turned away 
from Vincent and pulled the bell which was 
within her reach — pulled it once and again 
with a nervous twitch, and entangled her 
bracelet in the bell-pull, so that she had to 
bend over to unfasten it. Vincent sat 
gloomily by and looked on, without offering 
any assistance. He knew it was to hide her 
troubled face and gain a moment to compose 
herself; but he was scarcely prepared for 
her total avoidance of the subject when she 
next spoke. 

“ They are always so late of giving us 
tea,” she said, rising from her chair, and 
going up to Miss Wodehouse, “I can see 
you have finished your pattern ; let me see 
how it looks. That is pretty ; but I think 
it is too elaborate. How many things has 
Mary done for this bazaar, Mr. Wentworth ? 
— and do tell us when is it to be ? ” 

What did Vincent care for the answer ? he 
sat disenchanted in that same place which 
had been his bower of bliss all the evening, 
watching her as she moved about the room ; 
her beautiful figure went and came with a 
certain restlessness, surely not usual to her, 
from one corner to another. She brought 
Miss Wodehouse sometliing to look at from 
the work-table ; and fetched some music for 
Lucy from a window. She had the tea 


SALEM CHAPEL. 169 


placed in a remote corner, and made it there 
and insisted on bringing it to the Miss 
Wodehouses with her own hands. She was 
disturbed ; her sweet composure was gone. 
Vincent sat and watched her under the shade 
of his hands, wnth feelings as miserable as 
ever moved man. It was not sorrow for 
having disturbed her ; — feelings much more 
personal, mortification and disappointment, 
and, above all, jealousy, raged in his heart. 
Warmer and stronger than ever was his in- 
terest in Mr. Fordham now. 

After a miserable interval, he rose to take 
his leave. When he came up to her. Lady 
Western’s kind heart once more awoke in 
his behalf. She drew him aside after a mo- 
mentary struggle with herself. 

“ I know that gentleman,” she said, 
quickly, with a momentary flush of color, 
and shortening of breath ; “ at least I knew 
him once ; and the address you mention is 
I my brother’s address. K you will tell me 
what you want to know, I-will ask for you. 
My brother and he used not to be friends, 

but I suppose . What did you want to 

know ? ” 

“Only,” said Vincent, with involuntary 
bitterness, “ if he was a man of honor, and 
I could be trusted ; nothing else.” 
j The young Dowager paused and sighed ; 
j her beautiful eyes softened with tears. “ Oh, 

I yes — yes ; with life — to death ! ” she said, 
with a low accompaniment of sighing, and a 
wistful, melancholy smile upon her lovely 
face. 

Vincent hastened out of the house. He 
j ventured to say nothing to himself as he 
j went up Grange Lane in the starless night, 
I with all the silence and swiftness of passion. 
I He dared not trust himself to think. His 
i very heart, the physical . organ itself, seemed 
I throbbing and bursting with conscious pain. 
I Had she loved this mysterious stranger 
i whose undecipherable shadow hung over the 
I minister’s path ? To Vincent’s fancy, noth- 
j ing else conld account for her agitation ; and 
; was he so true, and to be trusted ? Poor 
I gentle Susan, w'hom such a fate and doom 
I was approaching as might have softened her 
' brother’s heart, had but little place in his 

i thoughts. He was not glad of that favora- 
ble verdict. He was overpowered with jeal- 
ous rage and passion. Alas, lor his dreams ! 
Once more, what downfall and overthrow 
had come of it! once more he had come 


down to his own position, and the second 
aw'akening was harder than the first. When 
he got home, and found his mother, affec- 
tionately proud, waiting to hear all about 
the great lady he had been visiting, it is im- 
possible to express in words the intolerable 
impatience and disgust with himself and his 
fate which overpowered the young man. He 
had a bad headache, Mrs. Vincent said, she 
was sure, and he did not contradict her. It 
was an unspeakable relief to him when she 
went to her own room, and delivered him 
from the tender scrutiny of her eyes — those 
eyes full of nothing but love, which, in the 
irritation of his spirit, drove him desperate. 
He did not tell her about the unexpected 
discovery he had made. The very name of 
Fordham would have choked him that night, 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The next morning brought no letters ex- 
cept from Susan. Fordham, if so true as 
Lady Western called him, was not, Vincent 
thought wdth bitterness, acting as an honor- 
able man should in this emergency. But 
perhaps he might come to Carlingford in the 
course of the day, to see Susan’s brother. 
The aspect of the young minister was 
changed when he made his appearance at 
the breakfast-table. Mrs. Vincent made the 
most alarmed inquiries about his health, but 
— stopped abruptly in making them by his 
short and ungracious answer — came to a 
dead pause j and with a pang of fright and 
mortification, acknowledged to herself that 
her son was no longer her boy, whose entire 
heart she knew, but a man with a life and 
concerns of his own, possibly not patent to 
his mother. That breakfast was not a cheer- 
ful meal. There had been a long silence, 
broken only by those anxious attentions to 
each other’s personal comfort, with which 
people endeavor to smooth down the embar- 
rassment of an intercourse apparently confi- 
dential, into which some sudden unexplain- 
able shadow has fallen. At last Vincent got 
up from the table, with a little outbreak of 
impatience. 

“ I can’t eat this morning ; don’t ask me. 
Mother, get your bonnet on,” said the young 
man ; “ we must go to see Mrs. Hilyard to- 
day.” 

“ Yes, Arthur,” said Mrs. Vincent meekly ; 
she had determined not to see Mrs. Hilyard, 
of whom her gentle respectability was sus- 


170 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


picious ; but, startled by her son’s looks, and 
by the evident arrival of that period, in- 
stinctively perceived by most women, at 
which a man snatches the reins out of his 
adviser’s hand, and has his way, the alarmed 
and anxious mother let her arms fall, and 
gave in without a struggle. 

“ The fact is, I heard of Mr. Fordham 
last night,” said Vincent, walking about the 
room, lifting up and setting down again ab- 
stractedly the things on the table. “ Lady 
Western knows him, it appears ; perhaps 
Mrs. Hilyard does too.” 

“Lady Western knows him? O Arthur, 
tell me — what did she say ? ” cried his 
mother, clasping her hands. 

“ She said he could be trusted — with life 
—•to death,” said Vincent, very low, with an 
inaudible groan in his heart. He was pre- 
pared for the joy and the tears, and the 
thanksgiving with which his words were re- 
ceived ; but he could not have believed how 
sharply his mother’s exclamation, • “ God 
bless my Susan! now lam happy about 
her, Arthur. I could be content to die,” 
would go to his heart. Susan, yes ! — it was 
right to be happy about her ; and as for 
himself, who cared P He shut up his heart 
in that bitterness ; but it filled him with 
an irritation and restlessness which he could 
not subdue. 

“ We must go to Mrs. Hilyard ; probably 
she can tell us more,” he said abruptly ; 
‘ and there is her child to speak of. I 
blame myself,” he added, with impatience, 
“ for not telling her before. Let us go now 
directly — never mind ringing the bell; all 
that can be done when we are out. Dinner ? 
oh, for Heaven’s sake, let manage that ! 
Where is your bonnet, mother ? the air will 
do me good after a bad night.” 

“ Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Vincent, moved 
by this last argument. It must be his head- 
ache, no doubt, she tried to persuade her- 
self. Stimulated by the sound of his foot- 
step in the next room, she lost very little 
time over her toilette. Perhaps the chill 
January air, sharp with frost, air full of nat- 
ural exhilaration and refreshment, did bring 
a certain relief to the young Nonconformist’s 
aching temples and exasperated temper. It 
was with difficulty his mother kept time with 
his long strides, as he hurried her along the 
street, not leaving her time to look at Salem, 
which was naturally the most interesting 


point in Carlingford to the minister’s mother* 
Before she had half prepared herself for this 
interview, he had hurried her up the narrow 
bare staircase which led to Mrs. Hilyard’s 
lodgings. On the landing, with the door half 
open, stood Lady Western’s big footman, 
fully occupying the narrow standing-ground, 
and shedding a radiance of plush over the 
whole shabby house. The result upon Mrs. 
Vincent was an immediate increase of com- 
fort, for surely the woman must be respect- 
able to whom people sent messages by so 
grand a functionary. The sight of the man 
struck Vincent like another pang. She had 
sent to take counsel, no doubt, on the evi- 
dently unlooked-for information which had 
startled her so last night. 

“ Come in,” said the inhabitant of the 
room. She was folding a note for which the 
footman waited. Things were just as usual 
in that shabby place. The coarse stuff at 
which she had been working lay on the table 
beside her. Seeing a woman with Vincent, 
she got up quickly, and turned her keen eyes 
upon the new-comer. The timid doubtful 
mother, the young man, somewhat arbitrary • 
and self-willed^ who had brought his com- 
panion there against her will, the very look, 
half fright, half suspicion, which Mrs. Vin- 
cent threw round the room, explained mat- 
ters to the quick observer before her. She 
was mistress of the position at once. 

“ Take this to Lady Western, John,” said 
Mrs. Hilyard. “ She may come when she 
pleases — I shall be at home all day ; but tell 
her to send a maid next time, for you are 
much too magnificent for Back Grove Street. 
This is Mrs. Vincent, I know. Your son 
has brought you to see me, and I hope you 
have not come to say that I was too rash in 
asking a Christian kindness from this young 
man’s mother. If he had not behaved like 
a paladin, I should not have ventured upon 
it ; but when a young man conducts himself 
so, I think his mother is a good woman. 
You have taken in my child ? ” 

She had taken Mrs. Vincent by both hands, 
and placed her in a chair, and sat down be- 
side her. The widow had not a word to say. 
What with the praise of her son, which was 
music to her ears — what with the confusion 
of her own position, she was painfully em- 
barrassed and at a loss, and anxiously full 
of explanations. “ Susan has, I have no 
doubt; but I am sorry I left home on 


SALEM CHAPEL. 171 


Wednesday morning, and we did not know 
then they were expected ; but we have a 
spare room, and Susan, I don’t doubt ” 

“ The fact is, my mother had left home 
before they could have reached Lonsdale,” 
interposed Vincent ; “ but my sister would 
take care of them equally well. They are 
all safe. A note came this morning an- 
nouncing their arrival. My mother,” said 
the young man hastily, “returns almost im- 
mediately! It will make no difference to 
the strangers.” 

“ I am sure Susan will make t];iem com- 
fortable, and the beds would be well aired,” 
said Mrs. Vincent ; “ but I had sudden occa- 
sion to leave home, and did not even know 
of it till the night before. My dear,” she 
said, with hesitation, “ did you think Mrs. 
Hilyard would know ? I brought Susan’s 
note to show you,” she added, laying down 
that simple performance in which Susan an- 
nounced the receipt of Arthur’s letter, and 
the subsequent arrival of “ a governess-lady, 
and the most beautiful girl that ever Avas 
seen.” The latter part of Susan’s hurried 
note, in which she declared this beautiful 
girl to be “ very odd— a sort of grown-up 
baby,” was carefully abstracted by the pru- 
dent mother. 

The strange woman before them took up 
I the note in both her hands and drank it in, 

; with an almost trembling eagerness. She 
1 seemed to read over the words to herself 
I again and again Avith moving lips. Then 
' she drew a long breath of relief. 

“ Miss Smith is the model of agoverness- 
j lady,” she said, turning Avith a composure 
j wonderfully unlike that eagerness of anxiety 
I to Mrs. Vincent again — “ She never Avrites 
I but on her day, whatever may happen ; and 
' yesterday did not happen to bo her day. 

’ Thank you, it is Christian charity. You 
; must not be any loser mean time, and we 
' must arrange these matters before you go 
away. This is not a very imposing habita- 
' tion,” she said, glancing round Avith a move- 
' ment of her thin mouth, and comic gleam 
in her eye — “ but that makes no difference, 
. so far as they are concerned. Mr. Vincent 
knows more about me than he has any right 
: to knoAV,” continued the strange Avoman, 
’ turning her head toAvards him for the mo- 
f ment, Avith an amused glance — “ a man takes 
I one on trust sometimes, but a Avoman must 
! always explain herself to a woman : perhaps, 
( 


Mr. Vincent, you will leave us together 
Avhile I explain my circumstances to your 
mother ? ” 

“ Oh, I am sure it — it is not necessary,” 
said Mrs. Vincent, half alarmed, “ but Ar- 
thur, you Avere to ask ” 

“ What were you to ask ? ” said Mrs. Hil- 
yard, laying her hand with an involuntary 
movement upon a tiny note lying open on 
the table, to which Vincent’s eyes had al- 
ready wandered. 

“ The fact is,” he said, folloAving her hand 
Avith his eyes, “ that my mother came up to 
inquire about some one called Fordham, in 
Avhom she is interested. Lady Western 
knows him,” said Vincent, abruptly, looking 
in Mrs. Hilyard’s face. 

“ Lady Western knows him. You per- 
ceive that she has written to ask me about 
him this morning. Yes,” said Mrs. Hilyard, 
looking at the young man, not Avithout a 
shade of compassion. “ You are quite right 
in your conclusions ; poor Alice and he icere 
in love Avith each other before she married 
Sir John. He has not been heard of for a 
long time. What do you want to know, and 
how is it he has shoAved himself now?” 

“It is for Susan’s sake,” cried Mrs. Vin- 
cent interposing. “ O Mrs. Hilyard, you 
Avill feel for me better than any one — my 
only daughter ! I got an anonymous letter 
the night before I left. I am so flurried I 
almost forget what night it Avas — Tuesday 
night — which arrived Avhen my dear child 
Avas out. I never kept anything from her in 
all her life, and to conceal it Avas dreadful — 
and how Ave got through that night ” 

“ Mother, the details are surely not nec-. 
essary now,” said her impatient son. “We 
Avant to knoAV Avhat are this man’s antece- 
dents and his character — that is all,” he 
added, with irrestrainable bitterness. 

Mrs. Hilyard took up her Avork, and 
pinned the long coarse seam to her knee. 
“ Mrs. Vincent Avill tell me herself,” she 
said, looking straight at him with her 
amused look. Of ail her strange peculiari- 
ties, this faculty of amusement was the 
strangest. Intense restrained passion, anx- 
iety of the most desperate kind, a wild Avill 
Avhich Avould pause at nothing, all blended 
Avith and left room for this unfailing percep- 
tion of any ludicrous possibility. Vincent 
got up hastily, and, going to the Avindow, 
looked out upon the dismal prospect of Sa- 


172 CHRONICLES 01 

lem, throwing its shabby shadow upon those 
dreary graves. Instinctively he looked for 
the spot where that conversation must have 
been held which he had overheard from the 
vestry window ; it came most strongly to his 
mind at that moment. As his mother went 
through her story, how Mr. Fordham had 
come accidentally to the house — how grad- 
ually they had admitted him to their friend- 
ship — how, at last, Susan and he had been 
engaged — her son stood at the window, fol- 
lowing in his mind all the events of that 
evening, which looked so long ago, yet was 
only two or three evenings back. He re- 
called to himself his rush to the telegraph 
office j and again, with a sharp stir of oppo- 
sition and enmity, recalled, clear as a pic- 
ture, the railway-carriage just starting, the 
flash of light inside, the face so clearly evi- 
dent against the vacant cushions. What 
had he to do with that face, with its eagle 
outline and scanty long locks ? Somehow, 
in the meshes of fate he felt himself so in- 
volved that it was impossible to forget this 
man. He came and took his seat again with 
his mind full of that recollection. The story 
had come to a pause, and Mrs. Hilyard sat 
silent, taking in with her keen eyes every 
particular of the gentle widow’s character, 
evidently, as Vincent could see, following 
her conduct back to those springs of gentle, 
but imprudent, generosity and confidence in 
what people said to her, from which her pres- 
ent difficulties sprang. 

“ And you admitted him first ? ” said Mrs. 

Hilyard, interrogatively, ‘ ‘ because ? ” 

She paused. Mrs. Vincent became embar- 
rassed and nervous. 

“ It was very foolish, very foolish,” said 
the widow, wringing her hands; “but he 
came to make inquiries, you know. I an- 
swered him civilly the first time, and he came 
again and again. It looked so natural. He 
had come down to see a young relation at 
school in the neighborhood.” 

Mrs. Hilyard uttered a sudden exclama- 
tion — very slight, low, scarcely audible ; but 
it attracted Vincent’s attention. He could 
see that her thin lips were closed, her figure 
slightly erected, a sudden keen gleam of in- 
terest in her face. “ Did he find his rela- 
tion ? ” she asked, in a voice so ringing and 
distinct, that the young minister started, and 
sat upright, bracing himself for something 
about to happen. It did not flash upon him 


’ CARLINGFORD. 

yet what that meaning might be ; but his 
pulses leapt with a prescient thrill of some 
tempest or earthquake about to fall. 

“ No ; he never could find her — it did not 
turn out to be our Lonsdale, I think — what 
is the matter ? ” cried Mrs. Vincent ; “ you 
both know something I don’t — what has 
happened ? Arthur, have I said anything 
dreadful ? — Oh, what does it mean ? ” 

“ Describe him if you can,” said Mrs. Hil- 
yard, in a tone which, sharp and calm, tin- 
gled through the room with a passionate 
clearness which nothing but extreme excite- 
ment could give. She had taken Mrs. Vin- 
cent’s hand, and held it tightly with a certain 
compassionate compulsion, forcing her to 
speak. As for Vincent, the horrible suspi- 
cion which stole upon him unmanned him 
utterly. He had sprung to his feet, and 
stood with his eyes fixed on his mother’s 
face, with an indescribable horror and sus- 
pense. It was not her he saw. With hot 
eyes that blazed in their sockets, he was fix- 
ing the gaze of desperation lipon a pitrture 
in his mind, v/lkch he felt but too certain 
would correspond with the faltering w'ords 
which fell from her lips. Mrs. Vincent her- 
self would have thrown herself wildly upon 
him, and lost her head altogether in a fright- 
ened attempt to find out what this sudden 
commotion meant, had she not been fixed and 
supported by that strong yet gentle grasp 
upon her hand. “ Describe him — take 
time,” said her strange companion again — 
not looking at her, but waiting in an in- 
describable calm of passion for the words 
which she could frame in her mind before 
they were said. 

“ Tall,” said the widow’s faltering, alarmed 
voice, falling with a strange uncertainty 
through the intense stillness, in single words, 
with gasps between ; “ not — a very young 
man — aquiline — with a sort of eagle-look — 
light hair— long and thin, and as fine as silk 
— very light in his beard, so that it scarcely 
showed. Oh, God help us ! what is it ? — 
what is it ? — You both know whom I mean.” 

Neither of them spoke ; but the eyes of 
the two met in a single look, from which 
both withdrew, as if the communication were 
a crime. With a shudder Vincent approached 
his mother ; and, speechless though he was, 
took hold of her, and drew her to him ab- 
ruptly. Was it murder he read in those 
eyes, with their desperate concentration of 


SALEM CHAPEL. 173 


■will and power ? The sight of them, and 
recollection of their dreadM splendor, drove 
even Susan out of his mind. Susan, poor 
gentle soul ! — what if she broke her tender 
heart in which no devils lurked ? “ Mother, 
come — come,” he said, hoarsely, raising her 
up in his arms, and releasing the hand which 
the extraordinary woman beside her still 
clasped fast. The movement roused Mrs.. 
Hilyard as well as Mrs. Vincent. She rose 
up promptly from the side of the visitor who 
bad brought her such news. 

I need not suggest to you that this must 
be acted on at once,” she said, to Vincent, 
who, in his agitation, saw how the hand, 
with which she leant on the table, clenched 
hard till it grew white with the pressure. 
“ The man we have to deal with spares noth- 
ing.” She stopped, and then, with an effort, 
went up to the half-fainting mother, who 
hung upon Vincent’s arm, and took her hands 
and pressed them close. “We have both 
thrust our children in the lion’s mouth,” she 
cried, with a momentary softening. “ Go, 
poor woman, and save your child if you can, 


and so will I — we are companions in misfor- 
tune. And you are a priest, why cannot you 
curse him ? ” she exclaimed, with a bitter 
cry. The next moment she had taken down 
a travelling-bag from a shelf, and kneeling 
down by a trunk, began to transfer some 
things to it. Vincent left his mother, and 
went up to her with a sudden impulse, “ I 
am a priest, let me bless you,” said the young 
man, touching with a compassionate hand 
the dark head bending before him. Then 
he took his mother away. He could not 
speak as he supported her down-stairs ; she, 
clinging to him with double weakness, could 
scarcely support herself at all in her agita- 
tion and wonder when they got into the 
street. She kept looking in his face with a 
pitiful appeal that went to his heart. 

“ Tell me, Arthur, tell me ! ” She sobbed 
it out unawares, and over and over before 
he knew what she was saying. And what 
could he tell her ? “We must go to Susan 
— poor Susan ! ” was all the young man could 
say. 


1Y4 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


PART V. — CHAPTER XV. 

Mrs. Vincent came to a dead stop as 
they passed the doors of Salem, which were 
ajar, taking resolution in the desperateness 
cf her uncertainty— for the feelings in the 
widow’s mind were not confined to one 
burning impulse of terror for Susan, but 
complicated by a wonderful amount of flying 
anxieties about other • matters as well. She 
knew, by many teachings of experience, 
what would be said by all the connection, 
when it was known that the minister’s 
mother had been in Carlingford without 
going to see anybody — not even Mrs. Tufton, 
the late minister’s wife, or Mrs. Tozer, who 
was so close at hand. Though her heart 
was racked, Mrs. Vincent knew her duty. 
She stopped short in her fright and distress 
with the mild obduracy of which she was 
capable. Before rushing away out of Car- 
lingford to protect her daughter, the mother, 
notwithstanding her anxiety, could not for- 
get the injury which she might possibly do 
by this means to the credit of her son. 

“Arthur, the chapel is open — I should 
like to go in and rest,” she said, with a little 
gasp ; “ and oh, my dear boy, take a little 
pity upon me ! To see the state you are in, 
and not to know anything, is dreadful. You 
must have a vestry, where one could sit 
down a little — let us go in.” 

“ A vestry — yes j it will be a fit place,” 
cried Vincent, scarcely knowing what he was 
saying, and indeed worn out with the vio- 
lence of his own emotions. This little per- 
sistent pause of the widow, who was not 
absorbed by any one passionate feeling, but 
took all the common cares of life with her 
into her severest trouble, awoke the young 
man to himself. He, too, recollected that 
this enemy who had stolen into his house 
was not to be reached by one wild rush, and 
that everything could not be suffered to 
plunge after Susan’s happiness into an in- 
discriminate gulf of ruin. All his own 
duties pricked at his heart with bitter re- 
minders in that moment when he stood by 
the door of Salem, where two poor women 
were busy inside, with pails and brushes, 
preparing for Sunday. The minister, too, 
had to prepare for Sunday. He could not 
dart forth, breathing fire and flame at a 
moment’s notice, upon the serpent who had 
entered his Eden. Even at this dreadful 
moment, in all the fever of such a discovery, 


the touch of his mother’s hand upon his 
arm brought him back to his lot. He 
pushed open the mean door, and led her 
into the scene of his weekly labors with a 
certain sickening disgust in his heart which 
would have appalled his companion. She 
was a dutiful woman, subdued by long ex- 
perience of that inevitable necessity against 
which all resistance fails ; and he a passion- 
ate young man, naturally a rebel against 
every such bond. They could not under- 
stand each other ; but the mother’s troubled 
face, all conscious of Tufton and Tozer, and 
what the connection would say, brought all 
the weight of his own particular burden 
back upon Vincent’s mind. He pushed in 
past the pails with a certain impatience 
which grieved Mrs. Vincent. She follow'ed 
him with a pained and disapproving look, 
nodding, with a faint little smile, to the 
women, who no doubt were members of the 
flock, and might spread an evil report of the 
pastor, who took no notice of them. As 
she followed him to the vestry, she could 
not help thinking, with a certain strange 
mixture of pain, vexation, and tender pride, 
how different his dear fatherwould have been. 
“ But Arthur, dear boy, has my quick tem- 
per,” sighed the troubled woman. After 
all, it was her fault rather than her son’s. 

“This is a very nice room,” said Mrs. 
Vincent, sitting down with an air of relief, 
“ but I think it would be better to close the 
window, as there is no fire. You were 
always very suscejitible to cold, Arthur, 
from a child. And now, my dear boy, we 
are undisturbed, and out of those glaring 
streets where everybody knows you. I have 
not troubled you, Arthur, for I saw you were 
very much troubled; but, oh! don’t keep 
me anxious now.” 

“ Keep you anxious ! You ask me to 
make you anxious beyond anything you can 
think of,” said the young man, closing the 
window with a hasty and fierce impatience, 
which she could not understand. “ Good 
heavens, mother ! why did you let that man 
into your innocent house ? ” 

“ Who is he, Arthur ? ” asked Mrs. Vin- 
cent, with a blanched face. 

“ He is ” Vincent stopped with his 

hand upon the window where he bad over- 
heard that conversation, a certain awe com- 
ing over him. Even Susan went out of his 
mind when he thought of the dreadful calm- 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


ness with which his strange acquaintance 
had promised to kill her companion of that 
night. Had she started already on this 
mission of vengeance ? A cold thrill came 
over him where he stood. “ I can’t tell who 
he is,” he exclaimed, abruptly, throwing 
himself down upon the little sofa ; “ but it 
was to be in safety from him that Mrs. 
Ililyard sent her daughter to' Lonsdale. It 
was he whom she vowed to kill if he found 
the child. Ah ! — he is,” cried the young 
man, springing to his feet again with a sud- 
den pang and smothered exclamation as the 
truth dawned upon him, “ Lady Western’s 
brother. What other worse thing he is I 
cannot tell. Ruin, misery, and horror at 
the least— death to Susan — not much less 
to me.” 

“ To you ? 0, Arthur, have pity upon 

mc,*my heart is breaking,” said Mrs. Vin- 
cent. “ O, my boy, my boy, whom I would 
die to save from any trouble ! don’t tell me 
I have destroyed you. That cannot be, 
Arthur — that cannot be ! ” 

The poor minister did not say anything— 
his heart was bitter within him. He paced 
up and down the vestry with dreadful 
thoughts. What was She to him if she had 
a hundred brothers ? Nothing in the world 
could raise the young Nonconformist to that 
sweet light which she made beautiful ; and 
far beyond that difference came the cruel 
recollection of those smiles and tears — 
pathetic, involuntary confessions. If there 
was another man in the world whom she 
could trust “ with life — to death ! ” what 
did it matter though a thousand frightful 
combinations involved poor Vincent with 
her kindred ? He tried to remind himself 
of all this, but did not succeed. In the 
mean time, the fact glared upon him that it 
was her brother who had aimed this deadly 
blow at the honor and peace of his own 
humble house ; and his heart grew sad with 
the thought that, however indifferent she 
might be to him, however unattainable, 
here w'as a distinct obstacle which must cut 
off all that bewildering, tantalizing inter- 
course which at present was still possible, 
notwithstanding every other hindrance. He 
thought of this, and not of Susan, as the 
floor of the little vestry thrilled under his 
feet. He was bit1,er, aggrieved, indignant. 
His troubled mother, who sat by there, half 
afraid to cry, watching him with frightened. 


175 

anxious, uncomprehending eyes, had done 
him a sharp and personal injury. She could 
not fancy how it was, nor what she could 
have done. She followed him with mild 
tearful glances, waiting with a woman’s 
compelled patience till he should come to 
himself, and revolving thoughts of Salem, 
and supply for the pulpit there, with an 
anxious pertinacity. But in her way Mrs. 
Vincent was a wise woman. She did not 
speak — she let him wear himself out first in 
that sudden apju’ehension of the misfortune 
personal to himself, w'hich was at the moment 
so much more poignant and bitter than any 
other dread. When he had subsided a little 
— and first of all he threw up the window, 
leaning out, to his mother’s great vexation, 
with a total disregard of the draught, and 
received the chill of the January breeze 
upon his heated brow — she ventured to say, 
gently, “ Arthur, what are we to do ? ” 

“ To go to Lonsdale,” said Vincent. 
“ When we came in here, I thought we 
could rush off directly ; but these women 
outside there, and this place, remind me 
that I am not a free man, w'ho can go at 
once and do his duty. I am in fetters to 
Salem, mother. Heaven knoAvs when I may 
be able to get away. Sunday must be pro- 
vided for first. No natural immediate action 
is possible to me.” 

“ Hush, Arthur, dear — oh, hush ! Your 
duty to your flock is above your duty even 
to your sister,” said the widow, with a trem- 
ulous voice, timid of saying anything to him 
whose mood she could not comprehend. 
“ You must find out -when the first train 
starts, and I will go. I have been very 
foolish,” faltered the poor mother, “ as you 
say, Arthur ; but if my poor child is to bear 
such a dreadful bloAv, I am the only one to 
take care of her. Susan” — here she made a 
pause, her lip trembled, and she had all but 
broken into tears — “ will not upbraid me, 
dear. You must not neglect your duty, 
whatever happens ; and now let us go and 
inquire about the train, Arthur, and you 
can come on Monday, after your work is 
over ; and, O my dear boy, we must not 
repine, but accept the arrangements of 
Providence. It was what your dear father 
always said to his dying day.” 

Her face ail trembling and pale, her eyes 
full of tears which were not shed, her ten- 
der humility, which never attempted a 


■[76 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


defence, and those motherly, tremulous, 
wistful advices which it now for the first 
time dawned upon Mrs. Vincent her son. 
was not certain to take, moved the young 
Nonconformist out of his personal vexation 
and misery. 

“ This will not do,” he said. “ I must go 
with you ; and we must go directly. Susan 
may bo less patient, less believing, less 
ready to take our word for it, than you 
imagine, mother. Come ; if there is any- 
body to be got to do this preaching, the 
thing will be easy. Tozer will help me 
perhaps. We will waste no more time 
tere.” 

“ I am quite rested, Arthur dear,” said 
Mrs. Vincent ; “ and it will be right for me 
to call at Mrs. Tozer’s too. I wish I could 
have gone to • Mrs. Tufton’s, and perhaps 
some others of your people. But you must 
tell them, dear, that I was very hurried — 
and — and not very well ; and that it was 
family business that brought me hero.” 

“I do not see they have any business 
with the matter,” said the rebellious min- 
ister. 

“ My dear, it will of course be known 
that I was in Carlingford ; and I know how 
things are spoken of in a flock,” said Mrs. 
Vincent, rising ; “ but you must tell them 
all I wanted to come, and could not — which, 
indeed, will be quite true. A minister’s 
family ought to be very careful, Arthur,” 
added the much-experienced woman. “ I 
know how little a thing makes mischief in a 
congregation. Perhaps, on the whole, I 
ought not to call at Mrs. Tozer’s, as there is 
no time to go elsewhere. But still I should 
like to do it. One good friend is often 
everything to a young pastor. And, my 
dear, you should just say a word in passing 
to the women outside.” 

“By way of improving the occasion?” 
said Vincent, with a little scorn. “ Mother, 
don’t torture yourself about me. I shall 
get on very well ; and we have plenty on 
our hands just now without thinking of 
Salem. Come, come ; with this horrible 
cloud overhanging Susan, how can you spare 
a thought for such trifles as these ? ” 

“ 0, Arthur, my dear boy, must not we 
keep you right?” said his mother; “are 
not you our only hope ? If this dreadful 
news you tell me is true, my child will break 
her heart, and I will be the cause of it ; and 


Susan has no protector or guardian, Arthur 
dear, that can take care of her, but you.” 

Wiping her eyes, and walking with a 
feeble step, Mrs. Vincent followed her son 
out of Salem; but she looked up with gen- 
tle interest to his pulpit as she passed, and 
said it was a cold day to the cleaners, with 
anxious carefulness. She was not carried 
away from her palpable standing-ground by 
any wild tempest of anxiety. Susan, whose 
heart would be broken by this blow, was her 
mother’s special object in life; but the 
thought of that coming sorrow which was to 
crush the girl’s heart, made Mrs. Vincent 
only the more anxiously concerned to con- 
ciliate and please everybody whose influ- 
ence could be of any importance to her son. 

So they came out into the street together, 
and went on to Tozer’s shop. She, tremu- 
lous, watchful, noting everyNiing ; now. lost 
in thought as to how the dreadful truth was 
to be broken to Susan ; now in anxious 
plans for impressing upon Arthur the neces- 
sity of considering his people — he, stinging 
with personal wounds and bitterness, much 
more deeply alarmed than his mother, and 
burning with consciousness of all the com- 
plications which she was totally ignorant of. 
Fury against the villain himself, bitter vex- 
ation that he was Lady Western’s brother, 
anger at his mother for admitting, at Susan 
for giving him her heart, at Mrs. Hilyard 
for he could not tell what, because she had 
added a climax to all, burned in Vincent’s 
mind as he went on to George Street with 
his mother leaning on his arm, who asked 
him after every wayfarer who passed them. 
Who was -that ? *It was not wonderful that 
the young man gradually grew into a fever 
of excitement and restless misery. Every- 
thing conspired to exasperate liim — even 
the fact that Sunday came so near, and 
could not be escaped. The whirl of his 
brain came to a climax when Lady Western’s 
carriage drove past, and through the mist 
of his wretchedness he saw the smile and the 
beautiful hand waved to him in sweet recog- 
nition. O Heaven ! to bring tears to those 
eyes, or a pang to that heart ! — to have her 
turn from him shuddering, or pass him with 
cold looks, because her brother was a villain,, 
and he the avenger of that crime ! His 
mother, almost running to keep up with his 
unconsciously quickened pace, cast pitiful 
looks at him, inquiring what it was. The 


SALEM CHAPEL. 17^i 


poor young fellow could not have told even 
if ho would. It was a combination of mise- 
ries, sharply stimulated to the intolerable 
point by the mission on which he had now 
to enter Tozer’s shop. 

“We heard you was come, ma’am,” said 
Tozer, graciously, “ and in course was look- 
ing for a call. I hope you are going to stay 
awhile and help us take care of the pastor. 
He don’t take that care of himself as his 
friends would wish,” said the butterman. 
“ Mr. Vincent, sir. I’ve a deal to say to you 
when you’re at leisure. Old Mr. Tufton, 
he has a deal to say to you. We are as 
anxious as ever we can be, us as' are old 
stagers, to keep the minister straight, ma’am. 
He’s but a young man, and he’s come into 
a deal of popularity, and any one more 
thought on, in our connection, I don’t know 
as I would wish to see 5 but it wouldn’t do 
to let him have his head turned. Them 
lectures on Church and State couldn’t but 
be remarked, being delivered, as you may 
say, in the world, all on us making a sacri- 
fice to do our duty by our fellow-creaturs, 
seein’ what we had in our power. But man 
is but mortal j and us Salem folks don’t 
like to see no signs' of that weakness in a 
pastor ; it’s our duty to see as his head’s 
not turned.” 

“ Indeed, I trust there is very little fear 
I of that,” said Mrs. Vincent, roused, and set 
on the defensive. “ My dear boy has been 
1 used to be appreciated, and to have people 
round him who could understand him. As 
for having his head turned, that might hap- 
pen to a man who did not know what intel- 
ligent approbation was ; but after doing so 
well as he did at college, and having his 
dear father’s approval, I must say I don’t 
see any cause to apprehend thaty Mr. Tozer. 
I am not surprised at all, for my part — I 
always knew what my Arthur could do.” 

“No more of this,” said Vincent, impa- 
I tiently. “ Look here, I have come on a 
special business. Can any one be got, do 
1 you think, to preach on Sunday ? I must 
go home with my mother to-day.” 

“ To-day ! ” Tozer opened his eyes, with 
a blank stare, as he slowly took off his 
apron. “You was intimated to begin that 
• course on the Miracles, Mr. Vincent, if 
you’ll excuse me, on Sunday. Salem folks 
is a little sharp, I don’t deny. It would be 
i a great disappointment, and I can’t sav I 

1 CHEONICLES OF CARLINGFOKD. 


think as it would be took well if you was tc 
go away.” 

“ I can’t help that,” said the unfortunate 
minister, to whom opposition at this moment 
was doubly intolerable. “ The Salem peo- 
ple, I presume, will hear reason. My mother 
has come upon ” 

“ Family business,” interrupted Mrs. 
Vincent, with the deepest trembling anx- 
iety. “ Arthur, dear, let me explain it, for 
you are too susceptible. My son is all the 
comfort we have in the world, Mr. Tozer,” 
said the anxious widow. “ I ought not to 
have told him how much his sister wanted 
him, but I was rash and did so; and now I 
ought to hear the penalty. I have made 
him anxious about Susan ; but, Arthur dear, 
never mind ; you must let me go by myself, 
and on Monday yo.u can come. Your dear 
father always said his flock was his first 
duty, and if Sunday is a special day, as Mr. 
Tozer says ” 

“ 0 pa, is it Mrs. Vincent? and you keep 
her in the shop, when we are all as anxious 
as ever we can be to see her,” said Pha3be, 
who suddenly came upon the scene. “ Oh, 
please to come up-stairs to the drawing- 
room. Oh, I am so glad to see you ! and 
it was so unkind of Mr. Vincent not to let 
us know you were coming. Mamma wanted 
to ask you to come here, for she thought it 
would be more comfortable than a bachelor’s 
rooms ; and wo did think the minister would 
have told us,” said Phoebe, with reproachful 
looks ; “ but now that you have come back 
again, after such a long time, please, Mr. 
Vincent, let your mother come up-stairs. 
They say you don’t think us good enough 
to be trusted now; but, oh, I don’t think 
you could ever be like that ! ” continued 
Phoebe, pausing by the door as she ushered 
Mrs. Vincent into the drawing-room, and 
giving the minister an appealing remonstra- 
tive glance before she dropped her eyelids 
in virginal humility. Poor Vincent paused 
too, disgusted and angry, but with a certain 
confusion. To fling out of the house, dash 
off to his rooms, make his hasty prepara- 
tions for the journey, was the impulse which 
possessed him ; but his mother was looking 
back with wistful curiosity, wondering what 
the two could mean by pausing behind her 
at the door. 

“ I am exactly as I was the last time I 
saw you, which was on Tuesday,” he said, 
12 


178 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


with some indignation. “ I will follow you, 
please. My mother has no time to spare, 
as she leaves to-day — can Mrs. Tozer see 
her ? She has been agitated and worn out, 
and we have not really a moment to spare.” 

“Appearingly not — not for your own 
friends, Mr. Vincent,” said Mrs. Tozer, who 
now presented herself. “ I hope to see you 
well, ma’am, and proud to see you in my 
house, though I will say the minister don’t 
show himself not so kind as w'as to he 
wished. Phoebe, don’t put on none o’ your 
pleading looks — for shame of yourself, miss ! 
If Mr. Vincent has them in Carlingford as 
he likes better than any in his own flock, it 
aint no concern of ours. It’s a thing well 
known as the Salem folks are all in trade, 
and don’t drive their carriages, nor give 
themselves up to this world and vanity. I 
never saw no good come, for my part, of 
folks sacrificing theirselves and their good 
money as Tozer and the rest set their hearts 
on, with that Music Hall and them advertis- 
ing and things — not as I was meaning to 
upbraid you, Mr. Vincent, particular not 
before your mother, as is a stranger — but 
we was a deal comfortabler before them lec- 
tures and things, and taking ofi* your atten- 
tion from your own flock.” 

Before this speech was finished, the whole 
party had assembled in the drawing-room, 
where a newly lighted fire, hastily set light 
to on the spur of the moment by Phoebe, 
was sputtering drearily. Mrs. Vincent had 
been placed in an arm-chair at one side, and 
Mrs. Tozer, spreading out her black silk 
apron and arranging her cap, set herself 
doggedly on the other, with a little toss of 
her head and careful averting of her eyes 
from the accused pastor. Tozer, without 
his apron, had drawn a chair to the table, 
and was drumming on it with the blunt 
round ends of his fingers ; while Phoebe, in 
a slightly pathetic attitude, ready for gen- 
eral conciliation, hovered near the minister, 
who grew red all over, and clenched his hand 
with an emphasis most intelligible to his 
frightened mother. The dreadful pause was 
broken by Phoebe, who rushed to the rescue. 

ma, how can you!” cried that 
young lady — “you were all worrying and 
teasing Mr. Vincent, you know you w^ere; 
and if he does know that beautiful lady,” 
said Phoebe, with her head pathetically on 
one side, and another glance at him, still 


more appealing and tenderly reproachful-— 
“ and — and likes to go to see her — it’s — it’s 
the naturalest thing that ever was. Oh, I 
knew he never could think anything of any- 
body else in Carlingford after Lady West- 
ern ! and I am sure, whatever other people 
may say, I — I — never can think Mr. Vincent 
was to blame.” 

Phoebe’s words were interrupted by her 
feelings — she sank back into a seat when she 
had concluded, and put a handkerchief to 
her eyes. As for Tozer, he still drummed 
on the table. A certain human sympathy 
was in the mind of the butterman, but he 
deferred to the readier utterance of his in- 
dignant wife. 

“ I never said it was any concern of ours,” 
said Mrs. Tozer. “ It aint our way to court 
nobody as doesn’t seek our company ; but a 
minister as we’ve all done a deal to make 
comfortable, and took an interest in equal 
to a son, and has been made such a fuss 
about as I never see in our connection — it’s 
disappointing, I will say, to see him a-going 
ofi* after w’orldly folks that don’t care no 
more about religion than I do about playing 
the piano. Not as Phoebe doesn’t play the 
piano better than most — but such things 
aint in my thoughts. I do say it’s disap- 
pointing, and gives folks a turn. If she’s* 
pretty lookin’ — as she may be, for what I 
can tell — it aint none of the pastor’s busi- 
ness. Them designing ladies is the ruin of 
a young man ; and when he deserts his flock, 
as are making sacrifices, and goes olf after 
strangers, I don’t say if it’s right or wrong, 
but I say it’s disappointin’, and what wasn’t 
looked for at Mr. Vincent’s hand.” 

Vincent had listened up to this point with 
moderate self-restraint — partially, perhaps, 
subdued by the alarmed expression of his 
mother’s face, who had fixed her anxious 
eyes upon him, and vainly tried to convey 
telegraphic warnings ; but the name of Lady 
Western stung him. “What is all this 
about ? ” he asked, with assumed coldness. 
“Nobody supposes, surely, that I am to 
render an account of my private friends to 
the managers of the chapel. It is a mistake 
if it has entered any imagination. I shall 
do nothing of the kind. There is enough of 
this. When I neglect my duties, I presume 
I shall hear of it more seriously. In the 
mean time, I have real business in hand.” 

“But, Arthur dear, I dare say some one 


SALEM CHAPEL. 179 


has misunderstood you,” said his mother; 
“it always turns out so. I came the day 
before yesterday, Mrs. Tozer. I left home 
very suddenly in great anxiety, and I was 
very much fatigued by the journey, and I 
must go back to-day. I have been very self- 
ish, taking my son away from his usual occu- 
pations. Never mind me, Arthur dear ; if you 
have any business, leave me to rest a little 
with Mrs. Tozer. I can take such a liberty 
here, because I know she is such a friend of 
yours. Don’t keep Mr. Tozer away from 
his business on my account. I know what 
it is when time is valuable. I will just stay 
a little with Mrs. Tozer, and you can let me 
know when it is time for the train. Yes, I 
came up very hurriedly,” said the gentle 
diplomatist, veiling her anxiety as she 
watched the gloomy countenances round 
her. .“We had heard some bad news ; I 
had to ask my son to go to town yesterday 
for me, and — and I must go home to-day 
without much comfort. I feel a good deal 
shaken, but I dare not stay away any longer 
from my dear child at home.” 

“Dear, dear; I hope it’s nothing serious 
as has happened ? ” said Mrs. Tozer, slightly 
mollified. 

“It is some bad news about the gentle- 
man Susan was going to marry,” said Mrs. 
Vincent, with a rapid calculation of the 
necessities of the position ; “ and she does 
not know yet. Arthur, my dear boy, it 
would be a comfort to my mind to know 
: about the train.” 

I “ Oh, and you will be so fatigued ! ” said 
' Phoebe. “I do so hope it’s nothing bad. 
I am so interested about Miss Vincent. O 
pa, do go down-stairs and look at the rail- 
way bill. Wont you lie down on the sofa a 
little and rest ? Fancy, mamma, taking two 
journeys in three days ! — it would kill you ; 
and, oh, I do so hope it is nothing very bad. 
I have so longed to see you and Mr. Vin- 
j cent’s sister. He told me all about her one 
evening. Is the gentleman ill? But do 
lie down and rest after all your fatigue. 
Mamma, don’t you think it would do Mrs. 
Vincent good?” 

“ We’ll have a bit of dinner presently,” 
said Mrs. Tozer. “ Phoebe, go and fetch 
' the wine. There is one thing in trouble, 
, that it makes folks find out their real friends. 
I It wouldn’t be to Lady Western the minister 
' would think of taking his mothei*. I aint 


saying anything, Tozer — nor Mr. Vincent 
needn’t think I am saying anything. If I 
speak my mind a bit I don’t bear malice. 
Phoebe’s a deal too feelin’, Mrs. Vincent — 
she’s overcome, that’s what she is — and if I 
must speak the truth, it’s disappointing to 
see our pastor as we’ve all made sacrifices 
for, following after the ungodly. I am a 
mother myself,” continued Mrs. Tozer, 
changing her seat, as her husband, followed 
by the indignant Vincent, went down-stairs, 
“ and I know a mother’s feelins ; but after 
what I heard from Mrs. Pigeon, and how 
it’s going through all the connection in Car- 
lingford ” 

Mrs. Vincent roused herself to listen. 
Her son’s cause was safe in her hands. 

Meantime, Vincent went angry and im- 
petuous down-stairs. “I will not submit to 
any inquisition,” cried the young man. “ I 
have done nothing I am ashamed of. If I 
dine with a friend, I will suffer no question- 
ing on the subject. What do you mean? 
What right has any man in any connection 
to interfere with my actions? Why, you 
would not venture to attack your servant 
so ! Am I the servant of this congregation ? 
Am I their slave ? Must I account to them 
for every accident of my life ? Nobody in 
the world has a right to make such a de- 
mand upon me.” 

“ If a minister aint a servant, we pays 
him his salary at the least, and expects him 
to please us,” said Tozer, sulkily. “ If it 
weren’t for that, I don’t give a sixpence for 
the Dissenting connection. Them as likes 
to please themselves would be far better in 
a State Church, where it wouldn’t disappoint 
nobody; not meaning to be hard on you 
as has given great satisfaction, them’s my 
views ; but if the Chapel folks is a little 
particular, it’s no more nor a pastor’s duty 
to bear with them, and return a soft an- 
swer. I don’t say as I’m dead again’ you, 
like the women,” added the butterman, soft- 
ening, “they’re jealous, that’s what they 
are ; but I couldn’t find it in my heart, not 
for ray own part, to be hard on a man as 
was led away after a beautiful creature like 
that. But there can’t no good come of it, 
Mr. Vincent ; take my advice, sir, as have 
seen a deal of the world— there can’t no 
good come of it. A man as goes dining 
with Lady AVestern, and thinking as she 
means to make a friend of him, aint the 


1QQ CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


man for Salem. We’re different sort of 
folks, and we can’t go on together. Old 
Mr. Tufton will tell you just the same, as 
has gone through it all — and that’s why I 
said both him and me had a deal to say to 
you, as are a young man and should take 
good advice.” 

It was well for Vincent that the worthy 
butterman was lengthy in his address. The 
sharp impression of resentment and indigna- 
tion which possessed him calmed down under 
this outpouring of words. He bethought 
himself of his dignity, his character. A 
squabble of self-defence, in which the sweet 
name of the lady of his dreams must be in- 
volved' — an angry encounter of words about 
her, down here in this mean world to which 
the very thought of her was alien, wound up 
her young worshipper into supernatural self- 
restraint. He edged past the table in the 
back-parlor to the window, and stood there 
looking out with a suppressed fever in his 
veins, biting his lip, and bearing his lecture. 
On the whole, the best way, perhaps, would 
have been to leave Carlingford at once, as 
another man would have done, and leave the 
Sunday to take care of itself. But though 
he groaned under his bonds, the young Non- 
conformist was instinctively confined by 
them, and had the habits of a man trained 
in necessary subjection to circumstances. 
He turned round abruptly when the butter- 
man at last came to a pause. 

“ I will write to one of my friends in Ho- 
merton,” he said, “ if you will make an 
apology for me in the chapel. I dare say I 
could get Beecher to come down, who is a 
very clever fellow ; and as for the beginning 
of that course of sermons — ” 

He stopped'short with a certain suppressed 
disgust. Good heavens ! what mockery it 
seemed. Amid these agonies of life, a man 
overwhelmed with deadly fear, hatred, and 
grief might indeed pause to snatch a burning 
lesson, or appropriate with trembling hands a 
consolatory promise ; but with the whole 
solemn future of his sister’s life hanging on 
a touch, with all the happiness and peace of 
his own involved in a feverish uncertainty, 
with dark, unsuspected depths of injury and 
wretchedness opening at his feet — to think 
of courses of sermons and elaborate preach- 
ments, ineffectual words, and pretences of 
teaching ! For the first time in the commo- 
tion of his soul, in the resentments and fore- 


bodings to which he gave no utterance, in 
the bitter conviction of uncertainty in every- 
thing which consumed his heart, a doubt of 
his own ability to teach came to Vincent’s 
mind. He stopped short wdth an intolerable 
pang of impatience and self-disgust. 

“ And what of that, Mr. Vincent ? ” said 
Tozer. “ I can’t say as I think it’ll be well 
took to see a stranger in the pulpit after 
them intimations. I made it my business to 
send the notices out last night; and after 
saying everywhere as you were to begin a 
coorse, as I always advised, if you had took 
my advice, it aint a W'ay to stop talk to put 
them off now. Old Mr. Tufton, you know, 
he was a different man ; it was experience 
as was his line ; and I don’t mean to say 
nothing against experience,” said the wor- 
thy deacon. “ There aint much true godli- 
ness, take my word, where there’s a shrink- 
ing from disclosing the state of your soul ; 
but for keeping up a congregation there’s 
nothing I know on like a coorse — and a 
clever young man as has studied his subjects, 
and knows the manners of them old times, 
and can give a bit of a description as takes 
the interest, that’s what I’d set my heart on 
for Salem. There’s but three whole pews in 
the chapel as isn’t engaged,” said the but- 
terman, with a softening glance at the pas- 
tor ; “ and the Misses Hemmings sent over 
this morning to say as they meant to come 
regular the time you was on the Miracles ; 
and but for this cackle of the women, as 
you’ll soon get over, there aint a thing as I 
can see to stop us filling up to the most in- 
fluential chapel in the connection ; I mean 
in our parts.” 

The subdued swell of expectation with 
which the ambitious butterman concluded, 
somehow made Vincent more tolerant even 
in his undiminished excitement. He gave a 
subdued groan over all this that was expected 
of him, but not without a little answering thrill 
in his own troubled and impatient heart. 

“ A week can’t make much difference, if 
I am ever to do any good,” said the young 
man. “ I must go now ; but if you explain 
the matter for me, you will smooth the way. 
I will bring my mother and sister here,” he 
went on, giving himself over for a moment 
to a little gleam of comfort, “ and everything 
will go on better. I am worried and anxious 
now, and don’t know what I am about. Give 
me some paper and I will write to Beecher. 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


You tvill like him. He is a good fellow, and j 
preaches much better than I do,” added poor 
Vincent, with a sigh, sitting wearily down 
by the big table. He was subdued to his 
condition at that moment, and Tozer appre- 
ciated the momentary humbleness. 

I am not the man to desert my minister 
when he’s in trouble,” said the brave but- 
terman. “ Look you here, Mr. Vincent ; 
don’t fret yourself about it. I’ll take it in 
hand ; and I’d like to see the man in Salem 
as would say to the contrary again’ me and 
the pastor both. Make your mind easy ; 
I’ll manage ’em. As for the women,” said 
Tozer, scratching his head, “ I don’t pretend 
not to be equal to that ; but my missis is as 
I reasonable as most, and Phoebe, she’ll stand 
up for you, whatever you do. If you’ll take 
my advice, and be a bit prudent, and don’t 
go after no more vanities, things aint so far 
wrong but a week or two will make them 
right.” 

With this consolatory assurance Vincent 
began to write his letter. Before he had 
concluded it, the maid came to lay the cloth 
for dinner, thrusting him into a corner, where 
he accomplished his writing painfully on his 
knee with his ink 'on the window-sill, a po- 
sition in which Phoebe found him when she 
ventured down-stairs. It was she who took 
his letter from him, and ran with it to the 
’ shop to despatch it at once; and Phoebe 
came back to tell him that Mrs. Vincent was 
resting, and that it was so pleasant to see 
him back again after such a time. “ I never 
expected you would have any patience for us 
when I saw you knew Lady Western so well. 
Oh, she is so sweetly pretty ! and if I were 
a gentleman, I know I should fall deep in 
love with her,” said Phoebe, with a sidelong 
i glance, and not without hopes of calling forth 

: a disclaimer from the minister ; but the poor 

minister, jammed up in the corner, whence 
it was now necessary to extricate his chair 
preparatory to sitting down to a family din- 
^ ner'with the Tozers, was as usual unequal 
to the occasion, and had nothing to say. 
Phoebe’s chair was by the minister’s side 
during that substantial meal ; and the large 
fire which burned behind Mrs. Tozer at the 
head of the table, and the steaming viands 
on the hospitable board, and the prevailing 
atmosphere of cheese and bacon which en- 
tered when the door was opened, made even 
Mrs. Vincent pale and flush a little in the 


181 

heroic patience and friendliness with which 
she bent all her powers to secure the sup- 
port of these adherents to her son. “ I could 
have wished, Arthur, they were a little more 
refined,” she said, faintly, when the dinner 
was over, and they were at last on their way 
to the train ; “ but I am sure they are very 
genuine, my dear ; and one good friend is 
often everything to a pastor ; and I am so 
glad we went at such a time.” So glad ! 
The young Nonconformist heaved a tempes- 
tuous sigh, and turned away not without a 
reflection upon the superficial emotions of 
women who at such a time could be glad. 
But Mrs. Vincent, for her part, with a fatigue 
and sickness of heart which she concealed 
from herself as much as she could, let down 
her veil, and cried quietly behind it. Per- 
haps her share of the day’s exhaustion had 
not been the mildest or least hard. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The journey was troublesome and tedious, 
involving a change from one railway to 
another, and a troubled glimpse into the 
most noisy streets of London by the way. 
Vincent had left his mother, as he thought, 
safe in the cab which carried them to the 
second railway station, and was disposing of 
the little luggage they had with them, that 
he might not require to leave her again, 
when he heard an anxious voice calling him, 
and found her close behind him, afloat in 
the bustle and confusion of tfie crowd, dread- 
fully agitated and helpless, calling upon her 
Arthur with impatient accents of distress. 
His annoyance to find her there increased 
her confusion and trembling. “Arthur,” 
she gasped out, “ I saw him — I saw him — 
not a minute ago — in a cab — with some 
ladies ; O my dear, run after him. That 
was the way he went. Arthur, Arthur, why 
don’t you go ? Never mind me — I can take 
care of myself.” 

“Who was it— how did he go?— why 
didn’t you stop him, mother?” cried the 
young man, rushing back to the spot she 
had left. Nothing was to be seen there but 
the usual attendant group of railway porters, 
and the alarmed cabman who had been keep- 
ing his eye on Mrs. Vincent. The poor widow 
gasped as she gazed and saw no traces of 
the enemy who had eluded them. 

“ 0 Arthur, my dear boy, I thought, in 
such a case, it ought to be a man to speak to 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


182 

him,” faltered Mrs. Vincent. “ He went 
that way — that way, look ! — in a cab, with 
somebody in a blue veil.” 

Vincent rushed away in the direction she 
indicated, at a pace which he was totally 
unused to, and of course quite unable to 
keep up beyond the first heat ; but few things 
could be more hopeless than to dash into 
the whirl of vehicles in the crowded current 
of the New Koad, with any vain hope of 
identifying one which had ten minutes’ start, 
and no more distictive mark of identity than 
the spectrum of a blue veil. He rushed 
back again, angry with himself for losing 
breath in so vain an attempt, just in time to 
place his mother in a carriage and jump in 
beside her before the train started. Mrs. 
Vincent’s anxiety, her questions which he 
could not hear, her doubts whether it might 
not have been best to have missed the train 
and followed Mr. Fordham, aggravated the 
much-tried patience of her son beyond 
endurance.' They set off upon their sad 
journey with a degree of injured feeling on 
both sides, such as often gives a miserable 
complication to a mutual anxiety. But the 
mother, wounded and timid, feeling more 
than ever the difference between the boy 
who was all her own and the man who had 
thoughts and impulses of which she knew 
nothing, was naturally the first to recover 
and to make wistful overtures of peace. 

“ Well, Arthur,” she said, after awhile, 
leaning forward to him, her mild voice mak- 
ing a gentle murmur through the din of the 
journey, “ though it was very foolish of me 
not to speak to him when I saw him, still, 
dear, he is gone and out of the way ; that is a 
great comfort — we will never, never let him 
come near Susan again. That is just what 
I was afraid of ; I have been saying to my- 
self all day, ‘ What if he should go to Lons- 
dale too, and deny it all ? ’ but Providence, 
you see, dear, has ordered it for us, and now 
he shall never come near my poor child 
again.” 

“Do you think he has been to Lonsdale .P ” 
asked Vincent. 

“My poor Susan!” said his simple 
mother, “ she will be happier than ever 
when we come to her with this dreadful 
news. Yes ; I suppose he must have been 
seeing her, Arthur — and I am glad it has 
happened while I was away, and before we 
knew ; and now he is gone,” said the widow. 


looking out of the carriage with a sigh of 
relief, as if she could still see the road by 
which he had disappeared — “ now he is gone, 
there will be no need for any dreadful strife 
or arguments. God always arranges things 
for us so much better than we can arrange 
them for ourselves. Fancy if he had come 
to-morrow to tear her dear heart to pieces ! 
— 0 Arthur, I am very thankful! There 
will be nothing to do now but to think 
best how to break it to her. He had ladies 
with him ; it is dreadful to think of such 
villany. O Arthur, do you imagine it could 
be his wife ? — and somebody in a blue veil.” 

“ A blue veil ! ” — Mrs. Hilyard’s message 
suddenly occurred to Vincent’s mind, with 
its special mention of that article of dis- 
guise. “ If this man is the man we suppose, 
he has accomplished one of his wishes,” said 
the minister, slowly j “ and she will kill him 
as sure as he lives.” 

“ Who will kill him ? — I hope nothing has 
occurred about your friend’s child to agitate 
my Susan,” said his mother. “ It was all 
the kindness of your heart, my dear boy ; 
but it was very imprudent of you to let Su- 
san’s name be connected with anybody of 
doubtful character. O Arthur, dear, we 
have both been very imprudent ! — you have 
so much of my quick temper. It was a pun- 
ishment to me to see how impatient you 
were to-day j but Susan takes after your dear 
father. O my own poor boy, pray ! pray for 
her, that her heart may not be broken by 
this dreadful news.” 

And Mrs. Vincent leant back in her cor- 
ner, and once more put down her veil. 
Pray !— who was he to pray for ? Susan, 
forlorn and innocent, disappointed in her 
first love, but unharmed by any worldly soil 
or evil passion ?— or the other sufferers in- 
volved in more deadly sort, himself palpi- 
tating with feverish impulses, broken loose 
from all his peaceful youthful moorings, 
burning with discontents and aspirations, 
not spiritual, but of the world ? Vincent 
prayed none as he asked himself that bitter 
question. He drew back in his seat oppo- 
site his mother, and pondered in liis heart 
the wonderful difference between the objects 
of compassion to whom the world gives ready 
tears, and those of whom the world knows 
and suspects nothing. Susan ! he could see 
her mother weeping over her in her white 
and tender innocence. What if, perhaps. 


SALEM CHAPEL. IgQ 


ehe broke her child’s heart ? the shock would 
only send the girl with more clinging devo- 
tion to the feet of the great Father ; but as 
for himself, all astray from duty and sober 
life, devoured with a consuming fancy, 
loathing the w'ay and the work to which he 
had been trained to believe that Father had 
called him — who thought of weeping ? — or 
for Her, whom his alarmed imagination 
could not but follow, going forth remorseless 
and silent to fulfil her promise, and kill the 
man who had wronged her ? Oh, the cheat 
of tears ! — falling sweet over the young suf- 
ferers whom sorrow blessed — drying up from 
the horrible complex pathways where other 
souls in undisclosed anguish, went farther 
and farther from God ! 

With such thoughts the mother and son 
hurried on upon their darkling journey. It 
was the middle of the night when they 
arrived in Lonsdale — ^ night starless, but 
piercing with cold. They were the only 
passengers who got out at the little station, 
where two or three lamps glared wildly on 
the night, and two pale porters made a faint 
bustle to forward the long convoy of car- 
riages upon its way. One of these men looked 
anxiously at the widow, as if with the sud- 
den impulse of asking a question, or com- 
municating some news, but was called off by 
his superior before he could speak. Vincent 
unconsciously observed the look, and was 
surprised and even alarmed by it, without 
knowing why. It returned to his mind, as 
he gave his mother his arm to walk the 
remaining distance home. Why did the 
man put on that face of curiosity and won- 
der ? But, to be sure, to see the mild widow 
arrive in this unexpected way in the middle 
of the icy January night, must have been 
surprising enough to any one who knew her, 
and her gentle decorous life. He tried to 
think no more of it, as they set out upon 
the windy road, where a few sparsely scat- 
tered lamps blinked wildly, and made the 
surrounding darkness all the darker. The 
station was half a mile from the town, and 
Mrs. Vincent’s cottage w^as on the other side 
of Lonsdale, across the river, which stole 
sighing and gleaming through the heart of 
the little place. Somehow the sudden black 
shine of that water as they caught it, cross- 
ing the bridge, brought a shiver and flash 
of wild imagination to the mind of the Non- 
conformist. He thought of suicides, mur- 


ders, ghastly concealment, and misery ; and 
again the face of the porter returned upon 
him. What if something had happened 
while the watchful mother had been out of 
the way? The wind came sighing round 
the corners with an ineffectual gasp, as if it 
too had some warning, some message to 
deliver. Instinctively he drew his mother’s 
arm closer, and hurried her on. Sugges- 
tions of horrible unthought-of evil seemed 
lurking everywhere in the noiseless black- 
ness of the night. 

Mrs. Vincent shivered too, but it was 
with cold and natural agitation. In her 
heart she was putting tender words together, 
framing tender phrases — consulting Avith 
herself how she was to look, and how to 
speak. Already she could see the half- 
awakened girl, starting up all glowing and 
sweet from her safe rest, unforeboding of 
evil j and the widow composed her face 
under the shadow of her veil, and sent back 
with an efibrt the unshed tears from her 
eyes, that Susan might not see any traces 
in her face, till she had “prepared her” a 
little for that dreadful, inevitable blow. 

The cottage was all dark, as was natural 
— doubly dark to-night, for there was no 
light in the skies, and the wind had extin- 
guished the lamp Avhich stood nearest, and 
on ordinary occasions threw a doubtful 
flicker on the little house. “ Susan will 
soon hear us, she is such a light sleeper,” 
said Mrs. Vincent. “Ring the bell, Ai’- 
thur. I don’t like using the knocker, to 
disturb the neighbors. Everybody would 
think it so surprising to hear a noise in the 
middle of the night from our house. There 
— wait a moment. That was a very loud 
ring ; Susan must be sleeping very soundly 
if that does not wake her up.” 

There was a little pause; not a sound, 
except the tinkling of the bell, which they 
could hear inside as the peal gradually sub- 
sided, was in the air; breathless silence, 
darkness, cold, an inhuman preternatural 
chill and watchfulness, no welcome sound of 
awakening sleepers, only their own dark 
shadows in the darkness, listening like all 
the hushed surrounding world at that closed 
door. 

“ Poor dear ! '0 Arthur, it is dreadful to 
come and break her sleep,” sighed Mrs. 
Vincent, whose strain of suspense and ex- 
pectation heightened the effect of the cold : 


184 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


“ when will she sleep as sound again ? Give 
another ring, dear. How terribly dark and 
quiet it is ! Ring again, again, Arthur ! — 
dear, dear me, to think of Susan in such a 
sound sleep ! and generally she starts at any 
noise. It is to give her strength to bear 
what is coming, poor child, poor child ! ” 

The bell seemed to echo out into the 
silent road, it pealed so clearly and loudly 
through the shut-up house, but not another 
sound disturbed the air without or within. 
Mrs. Vincent began to grow restless and 
alarmed. She went out into the road, and 
gazed up at the closed windows ; her very 
teeth chattered with anxiety and cold. 

“It is very odd she does not wake,” said 
the widow ; “ she must be rousing now, 
surely. Arthur, don’t look as if we had bad 
news. Try to command your countenance, 
dear. Hush, don’t you hear them stirring ? 
Now, Arthur, Arthur, oh, remember not to 
look so dreadful as you did in Carlingford ! 
I am sure I hear her coming down-stairs. 
Hark, what is it? Ring again, Arthur — 
again ! ” 

The words broke confused and half-artic- 
ulate from her lipsj a vague dread took 
possession of her, as of her son. For his 
part he rang the bell wildly without paus- 
ing, and applied the knocker to the echoing 
door with a sound which seemed to rever- 
berate back and back through the darkness. 
It was not the sleep of youth Vincent thought 
of, as, without a word to say, he thundered 
his summons on the cottage door. He was 
not himself aware what he was afraid of; 
but in his eyes he saw the porter’s alarmed 
and curious look, and felt the ominous 
silence thrilling with loud clangor of his 
own vain appeals through the deserted 
house. 

At length a sound — the mother and son 
both rushed speechless towards the side- 
window, from whict it came. The window 
creaked slowly open, and a head, which was 
not Susan’s, looked cautiously out. “ Who 
is there ? ” cried a strange voice ; “ it’s some 
mistake. This is Mrs. Vincent’s, this is, 
and nobody’s at home. If you don’t go 
away I’ll spring the rattle, and call thieves, 
thieves — Fire ! What do you mean coming 
rousing folks like this in the dead of night ? ” 

“O Williams, are you there? Thank 
God ! then all is well,” said Mrs. Vincent, 
clasping her hands. “ It is me— you need 


not be afraid — me and my son : don’t dis- 
turb Miss Susan, since she has not heard 
us — but come down, and let us in ; don’t 
disturb my daughter. It is me — don’t you 
know my voice ? ” 

“ Good Lord ! ” cried the speaker at the 
window ; then in a different tone, “ I’m 
coming, ma’am — I’m coming.” Instinc- 
tively, without knowing why, Vincent drew 
his mother’s arm within his own, and held 
her fast. Instinctively the widow clung to 
him, and kept herself erect by his arm. 
They did not say a word — no advices now 
about composing his countenance. Mrs. 
Vincent’s face was ghastly, had there been 
any light to see it. She went sheer forward 
when the door was open, as though neither 
her eyes, nor person were susceptible of any 
other motion. An inexpressible air of deso- 
lation upon the cottage parlor, where every- 
thing looked far too trim and orderly for 
recent domestic occupation, brought to a 
climax all the fanciful suggestions which had 
been tormenting Vincent. He called out his 
sister’s name in an involuntary outburst of 
dread and excitement, “ Susan ! Susan ! ” 
The words pealed into the midnight echoes ' 
— but there was no Susan to answer to the 
call. 

“ It is God that keeps her asleep to keep 
her happy,” said his mother, with her white 
lips. She dropped from his arm upon the 
sofa in a dreadful pause of determination, 
facing them with wide-open eyes — daring 
them to undeceive her— resolute not to hear 
the terrible truth, which already in her heart 
she knew. “ Susan is asleep, asleep ! ” she 
cried, in a terrible idiocy of despair, always 
facing the frightened woman before her with 
those eyes which knew better, but would not 
be undeceived. The shivering midnight, 
the mother’s dreadful looks, the sudden 
waking to. all this fright and wonder, were 
too much for the terrified guardian of the 
house. She fell on her knees at the widow’s 
feet. 

“ O Lord ! Miss Susan’s gone ! I’d have 
kep’ her if I had been here. I’d have said 
her mamma would never send no gentleman 
but Mr. Arthur to fetch her away. But 
she’s gone. Good Lord! it’s killed my 
missis — I knew it would kill my missis. 

O good Lord! good Lord! Run for a 
doctor, Mr. Arthur j if the missis is gone, 
what shall we do ? ” 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


Vincent threw the frightened creature off 
with a savage carelessness of which he was 
quite unconscious, and raised his mother in 
his arms. She had fallen back in a dreary 
momentary fit which was not fainting — her 
eyes fluttering under their half-closed lids, 
her lips moving with sounds that did not 
come. The shock had struck her as such 
shocks strike the mortal frame when it 
grows old. When sound burst at last from 
the moving lips, it was in a babble that 
mocked all her efforts to speak. But she 
was not unconscious of the sudden misery. 
Her eyes wandered about, taking in every- 
thing around her, and at last fixed upon a 
letter lying half-open on Susan’s work-table, 
almost the only token of disorder or agita- 
tion in the trim little room. The first sign 
of revival she showed was pointing at it 
with a doubtful but impatient gesture. Be- 
fore she could make them understand what 
she meant, that “quick temper” of which 
Mrs. Vincent accused herself blazed up in 
the widow’s eyes. She raised herself erect 
out of her son’s arms, and seized the paper. 
It was Vincent’s letter to his sister, written 
from London after he had failed in his in- 
quiries about Mr. Fordham. In the light 
of this dreadful midnight the young man 
himself perceived how alarming and peremp- 
tory were its brief injunctions. “Don’t 
! write to Mr. Fordham again till my mother’s 
I return; probably I shall bring her home: 

I we have something to say to you on this 
' subject, and in the mean time be sure you 
i do as I tell you.” Mrs. Vincent gradually 
recovered herself as she read this ; she said 
it over under her breath, getting back the 
use of her speech. There was not much 
explanation in it, yet it seemed to take the 
! place, in the mother’s confused faculties, of 
I an apology for Susan. “ She was fright- 
I ened,” said Mrs. Vincent, slowly, with 
I strange twitches about her lips — “ she was 
1 frightened.” That was all her mind could 
take in at once. Afterwards, minute by 
minute, she raised herself up, and came to 
self-command and composure. Only as she 
recovered did the truth reveal itself clearly 
even to Vincent, who, after the first shock, 
had been occupied entirely by his mother. 
The young man’s head throbbed and tingled 
as if with blows. As she sat up and gazed 
at him with her own recovered looks, 
through the dim ice-cold atmosphere, lighted 


185 

faintly with one candle, they both woke up 
to the reality of their position. The shock 
of the discovery was over — Susan was gone ; 
but _,where, and with whom? There was 
still something to hope, if everything to 
fear. 

“ She is gone to her Aunt Alice,” said 
Mrs. Vincent, once more looking full in the 
eyes of the woman who had been left in 
charge of the house, and who stood shiver- 
ing with cold and agitation, winding and 
unwinding round her a thin shawl in which 
she had wrapped up her arms. “ She is 
gone to her Aunt Alice — she was frightened, 
and thought something had happened. To- 
morrow we can go and bring her home.” 

“0 good Lord! No; she aint there,” 
cried the frightened witness,, half inaudible 
with her chattering teeth. 

“ Or to Mrs. Hastings at the farm. Susan 
knows what friends I can trust her to. Ar- 
thur, dear, let us go to bed. It’s uncom- 
fortable, but you wont mind for one nighty”' 
said the widow, with a gasp, rising up and 
sitting down again. She dared not trust 
herself to hear any explanation, yet all the 
time fixed with devouring eyes upon the face 
of the woman whom she would not suffer to 
speak. 

“ Mother, for Heaven’s sake let us under- 
stand it; let her speak — let us know. 
Where has Susan gone ? Speak out ; never 
mind interruptions. Where is my sister ? ” 
cried Vincent, grasping the terrified woman 
by the arm. 

“ O Lord ! If the missis wouldn’t look 
at me like that ! I aint to blame ! ” cried 
Williams, piteously. “ It was the day afore 
yesterday as the ladies came. I come up to 
help Mary with the beds. There was the 
old lady as had on a brown bonnet, and the 
young miss in the blue veil ” 

Vincent uttered a sudden exclamation, 
and looked at his mother; but she would 
not meet his eyes— would not acknowledge 
any recognition of that fatal piece of gauze. 
She gave a little gasp, sitting bolt upright, 
holding fast by the back of a chair, but kept 
her eyes steadily and sternly upon the wo- 
man’s face. 

» We tidied the best room for the lady, 
and Miss Susan’s little closet; and Mary 
had out the best sheets, for she says 

“ Mary— where’s Mary ? ” cried Mrs. Vin- 
cent, suddenly. 


186 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


“ I know no more nor a babe,” cried Wil- 
liams, wringing her hands. “ She’s along 
with Miss Susan — wherever that may be — 
and the one in the blue veil.” 

“ Go on, go on ! ” cried Vincent. 

But his mother did not echo his cry. Her 
strained hand fell upon her lap with a cer- 
tain relaxation and relief; her gaze grew 
less rigid ; incomprehensible moisture came 
to her eyes. “ O Arthur, there’s comfort in 
it ! ” said Mrs. Vincent, looking like herself 
again. “ She’s taken Mary, God bless her ! 
she’s known what she was doing. Now I’m 
more easy ; Williams, you can sit down and 
tell us the rest.” 

“ Go on ! ” cried Vincent, fiercely. “ Good 
heavens ! what good can a blundering coun- 
ti-y girl do her.e ? — go on.” 

The women thought otherwise ; they ex- 
changed looks of sympathy and thankful- 
ness ; they excited the impatient young man 
beside them, who thought he knew the 
world, into the wildest exasperation by that 
pause of theirs. His mother even loosed 
her bonnet off her aching head, and ven- 
tured to lean back under the influence of 
that visionary consolation ; while Vincent, 
aggravated to the intolerable pitch, sprang 
up, and, once more seizing Williams by the 
arm, shook her unawares in the violence of 
his anxiety. “ Answer me,” cried the young 
man ; “ you tell us everything but the most 
important of all. Besides this girl — and 
Mary — who was with my sister when she 
went away ? ” 

“ O Lord ! you shake the breath out of 
me, Mr. Arthur — you do,” cried the woman. 
“ Who ? why, who should it be, to be sure, 
but him as had the best right after yourself 
to take Miss Susan to her mamma ? You’ve 
crossed her on the road, poor dear,” said the 
adherent of the house, wringing her hands ; 
“but she was going to her ma — that’s 
where she was going. Mr. Arthur’s letter 
gave her a turn ; and then, to be sure, 
when Mr. Fordham came, the very first 
thing he thought upon was to take her to 
her mamma.” 

Vincent groaned aloud. In his first im- 
pulse of fury he seized his hat and rushed 
to the door to pursue them anyhow, by any 
means. Then, remembering how vain was 
the attempt, came back again, dashed down 
the hat he had put on, and seized upon the 
railway book in his pocket, to see when he 


could start upon that desperate mission. 
Minister as he was, a muttered curse ground 
through his teeth — villain ! coward ! de- 
stroyer! — curse him! His passion was 
broken in the strangest way by the com- 
posed sounds of his mother’s voice. 

“ It was very natural,” she said, with dry 
tones, taking time to form the words as if 
they choked her ; “ and of course, as you 
say, Williams, Mr. Fordham has the best 
right. He will take her to his mother’s— or 
— or leave her in my son’s rooms in Carling- 
ford; and as she has Mary with her — Ar- 
thur,” continued his mother, fixing a warning 
emphatic look upon him as he raised his 
astonished eyes to her face, “ you know that 
is quite right ; after you — Mr. Fordham is 
—the only person — that could have taken 
care of her in her journey. There ; I am 
satisfied. Perhaps, Williams, you had better 
go to bed. My son and I have something 
to talk of, now I feel myself.” 

“ I’ll go light the fire, and get a cup of 
tea — O Lord ! what Miss Susan would say 
if she knew you were here, and had got such 
a fright ! ” cried the old servant ; “ but now 
you’re composed, there’s nothing as’ll do you 
good like a cup of tea.” 

“ Thank you — yes ; make it strong, and 
Mr. Arthur will have some too,” said the 
widow ; “ and take care the kettle is boiling ; 
and then, Williams, you must not mind us, 
but go to bed.” 

Vincent threw down his book, and stared 
at her with something of that impatience 
and half-contempt which had before moved 
him. “ If the world were breaking up, I 
suppose women could still drink tea ! ” he 
said, bitterly. 

“ O Arthur, my dear boy,” cried his 
mother, “ don’t you see we must put the 
best face on it now ? Everybody must not 
know that Susan has been carried away by 

a O God, forgive me ! don’t let me 

curse him, Arthur. Let us get away from 
Lonsdale, dear, before we say anything. 
Words will do no good. O my dear boy, 
till we know better, Mr. Fordham is Susan’s 
betrothed husband, and he has gone to take 
care of her to Carlingford. Hush — don’t 
say any more. I am going to compose my- 
self, Arthur, for my child’s sake,” cried the 
mother, with a smile of anguish, looking into 
her son’s face. How did she drive those 
tears back out of her patient eyes ? How 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


did she endure to talk to the old servant 
about what was to be done to-morrow — and 
how the sick lady was next door— till the 
excited and shivering attendant could be i 
despatched up-stairs and got out of the way ? 
Woman’s weaker nature, that could mingle 1 
the common with the great ; or woman’s | 
strength, that could endure all things — which ! 
was it? The young man, sitting by in a 
sullen, intolerable suspense, waiting till it 
was practicable to rush away through the 
creeping gloom of night after the fugitives, 
could no more understand these phenomena 
of love and woe, than he could translate the 
distant mysteries of the spheres. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Early morning, but black as midnight ; 
bitter cold, if bitterer cold could be, than 
that to which they entered when they first 
came to the deserted house ; the little par- 
lor, oh, so wofully trim and tidy, with the 
fire laid ready for lighting, which even 
the mother, anxious about her son, had not 
the heart to light ; the candle on the table 
between them lighting dimly this speechless | 
interval ; some shawls laid ready to take ; 
with them when they went back again to the 
earliest train ; Mrs. Vincent sitting by with 
her bonnet on, and its veil drooping half | 
I over her pale face, sometimes rousing up to | 
cast hidden looks of anxiety at her son, | 
sometimes painfully saying something with j 
a vain effort at smiling — what o’clock was | 
it? when did he think they could reach town? 

little ineffectual attempts at the common 

intercourse which seemed somehow to deepen 
the dreadful silence, the shivering cold, the 
utter desolation of the sdene. Such a night ! 
— its minutes were hours as they stole by 
I noiseless in murderous length and tedium — 

I and the climax of its misery was in the little 
i start with which Mrs. Vincent now and then 
j woke up out of her own thoughts to make 
that pitiful effort to talk to her son. 

They were sitting thus, waiting, not even 
j venturing to look at each other, when a 
sudden sound startled them. Nothing more 
i than a footstep outside approaching softly. 

I A footstep— 'Surely two steps. They could 
i hear them far off in this wonderful stillness, 

I making steady progress near — nearer. Mrs. 
j Vincent rose up, stretching her little figure 
f into a preternatural hysteric semblance of 
j height. Who was it ?— Two people—surely 


187 

women — and, what women could be abroad 
at such an hour ? One lighter, one heavier, 
irregular as female steps are, coming this 
way — this way ! Her heart fluttered in the 
widow’s ears with a sound that all but oblit- 
erated those steps which still kept advancing. 
Hark, sudden silence! a pause — then, O 
merciful Heaven, could it be true ? a tinkle 
at the bell — a summons at the closed door. 

Mrs. Vincent had flown forth with open 
arms — with eyes blinded. The poor soul 
thought nothing less than that it was her 
child returned. They carried her back 
speechless, in a disappointment too cruel 
and bitter to have expression. Two women 
— one sober, sleepy, nervous, and full of 
trouble, unknown to either mother or son — 
the other with a certain dreadful inspiration 
in her dark face, and eyes that gleamed out 
of it as if they had concentrated into them 
all the blackness of the night. 

“ You are going back, and so am I,” Mrs. 
Hilyard said. “ I came to say a word to you 
before I go away. If I have been anyhow 
the cause, forgive me. God knows, of all 
things in the world the last I dreamt of was 
to injure this good woman or invade her in- 
nocent house. Do you know where they 
have gone? — did she leave any letters? — 
Tell me. She shall be precious to me as my 
own, if I find them out.” 

Mrs. Vincent freed herself from her son’s 
I arms, and got up with her blanched face, 
j “ My daughter — followed me — to Carling- 
ford,” she said, in broken words, with a de- 
termination which sat almost awful on her 
weakness. “We have had the great mis- 
fortune — to cross each other — on the v/ay. I 
am going — after her — directly. I am not 
afraid — of my Susan. She is all safe in my 
son’s house.” 

The others exchanged alarmed looks, as 
they might have done had a child suddenly 
assumed the aspect of a leader. She, who 
could scarcely steady her trembling limbs to 
stand upright, faced their looks with a dumb 
denial of her own anguish. “ It is— very 
unfortunate — but I am not anxious,” she 
said, slowly, with a ghastly smile. Human 
nature could do no more. She sank down 
again on her seat, but still faced them — 
absolute in her self-restraint, rejecting pity. 

I Not even tears should fall upon Susan’s sweet 
! name — not while her mother lived to defend 
it in life and death. 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


188 

The Carlingford needlewoman stood oppo- 
site her, gazing with eyes that went beyond 
that figure, and yet dwelt upon it, at so won- 
derful a spectacle. Many a terrible secret 
of life unknown to the minister’s gentle 
mother throbbed in her heart ; but she stood 
in a pause of wonder before that weaker 
woman. The sight of her stayed the pas- 
sionate current for a moment, and brought 
the desperate woman to a pause. Then she 
turned to the young man who stood speech- 
less by his mother’s side, — 

“You are a priest, and yet you do not 
curse,” she said. “ Is God as careless of a 
curse as of a blessing ? She thinks he will 
save the Innocents yet. She does not know 
that he stands by like a man, and sees them 
murdered, and shines and rains all the same. 
God! No — he never interferes. Good- 
by,” she added, suddenly, holding out to 
him the thin hand upon which, even in that 
dreadful moment, his eye still caught the 
traces of her work, the scars of the needle, 
and stains of the coarse color. “ If you ever 
see me again I shall be ‘a famous woman, 
Mr. Vincent. You will have a little of the 
traits of my glory, and be able to furnish 
details of my latter days. This good Miss 
Smith* here will tell you of the life it was 
before ; but if I should make a distinguished 
end after all, come to see me then — never 
mind where. I speak madly, to be sure, but 
you don’t understand me. There — not. a 
word. You preach very well, but I am be- 
yond preaching now — Good-by.” 

“ No,” said Vincent, clutching her hand — 
“ never, if you go with that horrible inten- 
tion in your eyes ; I will say no farewell to 
such an errand as this.” 

The eyes in their blank brightness paused 
at him for a moment before they passed to the 
vacant air on which they w'ere always fixed 
— paused with a certain glance of troubled 
amusement, the lightning of former days. 
“You flatter me,” she said, steadily, with 
the old habitual movement of her mouth. 
“It is years since anybody has taken the 
trouble to read any intention in my eyes. 
But don’t you understand yet that a woman’s 
intention is the last thing she is likely to 
perform in this world ? We do have mean- 
ings now and then, we poor creatures, but 
they seldom come to much. Good-by, 
good-by ! ” 

“You cannot look at me,” said Vincent, 


with a conscious incoherence, reason or ar- 
gument being out of the question. “ What 
is it you see behind there ? Where are you 
looking with those dreadful eyes ? ” 

She brought her eyes back as he spoke, 
with an evident effort, to fix them upon his 
face. “ I once remarked upon your high- 
breeding,” said the strange woman. “ A 
prince could not have shown finer manners 
than you did in Carlingford, Mr. Vincent. 
Don’t disappoint me now. If I see ghosts 
behind you, what then ? Most people that 
have lived long enough, come to see ghosts 
before' they die. But this is not exactly the 
time for conversation, however interesting 
it may be. K you and I ever see each other 
again, things will have happened before 
then ; you, too, perhaps, may have found the 
ghosts out. I appoint you to come to see 
me after you have come to life again, in the 
next world. Good-night. I don’t forget 
that you gave me your blessing when we 
parted last.” 

She was turning away when Mrs. Vincent 
rose, steadying herself by the chair, and put 
a timid hand upon the stranger’s arm. “ I 
don’t know who you are,” said the widow ; 
“ it is all a strange jumble; but I am an 
older woman than you, and a — a minister’s 
wife. You have something on your miijd. 
My son is frightened you will do something 
— I cannot tell what. You are much clev- 
erer than I am, but I am, as I say, an older 
woman, and a — a minister’s wife. I am not 
afraid of anything. Yes ! I know' God does 
not always save the Innocents, as you say — 
but he knows why, though we don’t. Will 
you go with me ? If you have gone astray 
when you were young,” said the mild woman, 
raising up her little figure with an ineffable 
simplicity,' “ I will never ask any questions, 
and it will not matter — for everybody I care 
for knows me. The dreadful things you 
think of will not happen if we go together. 
I was a minister’s wife thirty years. I know 
human nature and God’s goodness. Come 
with me.” 

“ Mother, mother ! what are you saying ? ” 
cried Vincent, who had all the time been 
making vain attempts to interrupt this ex- 
traordinary speech. Mrs. Hilyard put him 
away with a quick gesture. She took hold 
of the widow’s hand with that firm, support- 
ing, compelling pressure under which, the 
day before, Mrs. Vincent had yielded up all 


SALEM CHAPEL. 189 


! her secrets. She turned her eyes out of 
vacancy to the little pale woman who offered 
! her this protection. A sudden mist sur- 
! prised those gleaming eyes — a sudden thrill 
ran through the thin, slight, iron figure, 
upon which fatigue and excitement seemed 
to make no impression. The rock was 
stricken at last. 

“ No — no,” she sighed, with a voice that 
trembled. “ No — no ! the lamb and the lion 
: do not go together yet in this poor world. 
No — no — no. I wonder what tears have to 
do in my eyes ; ah, God in the skies ! if ever 
you do miracles, do one for this woman, and 
save her child! Praying and crying are 
! strange fancies for me — I must go away ; 
but first,” she said, still holding Mrs. Vin- 
cent fast — “ a woman is but a woman after 
i all — if it is more honorable to be a wicked 
I man’s wife than to have gone astray, as you 
( call it, then there is no one in the world who 
! can breathe suspicion upon me. Ask this 
I other good woman here, who knows all 
i about me, but fears me, like you. Fears 
me I What do you suppose there can be to 
fear, Mr. Vincent, you who are a scholar, 
and know better than these soft women,” 
said Mrs. Hilyard, suddenly dropping the 
widow’s hand, and turning round upon the 
young minister, with an instant throwing off 
of all emotion, which had the strangest hor- 
rifying effect upon the little agitated com- 
pany, “ in a woman who was born to the 
name of Rachel Russell, the model English 
wife? Will the world ever believe harm, 
do you imagine, of such a name? I will 
take refuge in my ancestress. But we go 
different ways, and have different ends to 
accomplish,” she continued, with a sudden 
returning gleam of the subdued horror — 
“ Good-night — good-night ! ” 


“ Oh, stop her, Arthur — stop her ! Susan 
will be at Carlingford when we get there ; 
Susan will go nowher^ else but to her 
mother,” cried Mrs. Vincent, as the door 
closed on the nocturnal visitors. “ I am 
as sure — as sure — ! Oh, my dear, do you 
think I can have any doubt of my own child? 
As for Susan going astray — or being carried 
off — or falling into wickedness — Arthur ! ” 
said his mother, putting back her veil from 
her pale face, “now I have got over this 
dreadful night, I know better — nobody must 
breathe such a thing to me. Tell her so, 
dear — tell her so ! — call her back — they will 
be at Carlingford when we get there ! ” 
Vincent drew his mother’s arm through 
his own, and led her out into the darkness, 
which was morning and no longer night. 
“ A few hours longer and we shall see,” he 
said, with a hard-drawn breath. Into that 
darkness Mrs. Hilyard and her companion 
had disappeared. There was another line 
of railway within a little distance of Lons- 
dale, but Vincent was at pains not to see his 
fellow-travellers as he placed his mother 
once more in a carriage, and once more 
caught the eye of the man whose curious 
look had startled him. When the gray 
morning . began to dawn, it revealed two 
ashen faces, equally speechless and absorbed 
with thoughts which neither dared commu- 
nicate to the other. They did not even look 
at each other, as the merciful noise and mo- 
tion wrapped them in that little separate 
sphere of being. One possibility and no 
more kept a certain coherence in both their 
thoughts, otherwise lost in > wild chaos — 
horrible suspense — an uncertainty worse 
than death. 


190 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


PART VI.— CIIAPTER XVIII. 

It was the very height of day when the 
travellers arrived in Carlingford. It would 
be vain to attempt to describe their transit 
through London in the bustling sunshine 
of the winter morning after the vigil of that 
night, and in the frightful suspense and ex- 
citement of their minds. Vincent remem- 
bered, for years after, certain cheerful street- 
corners, round which they turned on their 
way from one station to another, with shud- 
ders of recollection, and an intense con- 
sciousness of all the life circulating about 
them, even to the attitudes of the boys that 
swept the crossings, and their contrast with 
each other. His mother made dismal at- 
tempts now and then to say something ; that 
he was looking pale j that after all he could 
yet preach, and begin his course on the mir- 
acles; that it would be such a comfort to 
rest when they got home ; but at last became 
inaudible, though he knew by her bending 
across to him, and the motion of those 
parched lips with which she still tried to 
smile, that the widow still continued to make 
those pathetic little speeches without know- 
ing that she had become speechless in the 
rising tide of her agony. But at last they 
reached Carlingford, where everything was 
at its brightest, all the occupations of life 
afloat in the streets, and sunshine, lavish 
though ineffectual, brightening the whole 
aspect of the town. When they emerged 
from the railway, Mrs. Vincent took her 
son’s arm, and for the last time made some 
remark with a ghastly smile — but no sound 
came from her lips. They walked up the 
sunshiny street together with such silent 
speed as would have been frightful to look 
at had anybody known what was in their 
hearts. Mrs. Pigeon, who was coming along 
the other side, crossed over on purpose to 
accost the minister and be introduced to his 
mother, but was driven frantic by the total 
blank unconsciousness with which the two 
swept past her ; “ taking no more notice than 
if he had never set eyes on me in his born 
days ! ” as she described it afterwards. The 
door of the house where Vincent lived was 
opened to them briskly by the little maid in 
holiday attire; everything wore the most 
sickening, oppressive brightness within in 
fresh Saturday cleanliness. Vincent half 
carried his mother up the steps, and held 
fast in his own to support her the hand 


which he had drawm tightly through his arm. 
“ Is there any one here ? Has anybody 
come for me since I left ? ” he asked, with 
the sound of his own words ringing shrilly 
into his ears. “Please, sir, Mr. Tozer’s 
been,” said the girl alertly, with smiling 
confidence. She could not comprehend the 
groan with which the young man startled all 
the clear and sunshiny atmosphere, nor the 
sudden rustle of the little figure beside him, 
which moved somehow, swaying with the 
words as if they were a wind. “ Mother, 
you are going to faint ! ” cried-Vincent — and 
the little maid flew in terror to call her mis- 
tress, and bring a glass of water. But wdien 
she came back, the mother and son were no 
longer in the bright hall with its newly 
cleaned wainscot and whitened floor. When 
she followed them up-stairs with the water, 
it was the minister who had dropped into 
the easy-chair with his face hidden on the 
table, and his mother was standing beside 
him. Mrs. Vincent looked up when the girl 
came in, and said, “ Thank you — that will 
do,” looking in her face, and not at what 
she carried. She was of a dreadful paleness, 
and looked with eyes that were terrible to 
that w'ondering observer upon the little 
attendant. “ Perhaps there have been some 
letters , or messages,” said Mrs. Vincent. 
“ W'e — we expected somebody to come ; 
think! — a young lady came here? — and 
when she found we were gone ” 

“ Only Miss Phoebe I ” said the girl in 
amazement — “ to say as her Ma ” 

“Only Miss Phoebe ! ” repeated the widow, 
as if she did not comprehend the words. 
Then she turned to her son, and smoothed 
down the ruffled locks on his head; then 
held out her hand again to arrest the girl as 
she was going away. “ Has your mistress 
got anything in the house,” she asked — 
“ any soup or cold meat, or anything ? 
Would you bring it up, please, directly? — 
soup would perhaps be best — or a nice chop. 
Ask what she has got, and bring it up on a 
tray. You need not lay the cloth — only a 
tray with a napkin. Yes, I see you know 
what I mean.” 

“ Mother ! ” cried Vincent, raising his 
head in utter fright as the maid left the 
room. He thought in the shock his moth- 
er’s gentle wits had gone. 

“ You have eaten nothing, dear, since we 
left,” she said, with a heartbreaking smile. 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


“lam not going crazy, Arthur. Oh, no, 
no, my dear boy ! I will not go crazy ; but 
you must eat something, and not be killed 
too. Susan is not here,” said Mrs. Vincent, 
with a ghastly, wistful look round the room ; 

“ but we are not going to distrust her at the 
very first moment, far less her Maker, Ar- 
thur. Oh, my dear, I must not speak, or 
something will happen to me ; and nothing 
must happen to you or me till we have found 
your sister. You must eat when it comes, 
and then you must go away. Perhaps,” 
said Mrs. Vincent, sitting down and looking 
her son direct in the eyes, as if to read any 
suggestion that could arise there, “she has lost 
her way : — perhaps she missed one of these 
dreadful trains — perhaps she got on the 
wrong railway, Arthur. Oh, my dear boy, 
you must take something to eat, and then 
you must go and bring Susan home. She 
has nobody to take care of her but you.” 

Vincent returned his mother’s look with a 
wild inquiring gaze, but with his lips he said 
“Yes,” not daring to put in words the ter- 
rible thoughts in his heart. The two said 
nothing to each other of the hon-or that pos- ' 
sessed them both, or of the dreadful haze of 
uncertainty in which that Susan whom her 
I brother was to go and bring home as if from 
an innocent visit, was now enveloped. Their 
eyes spoke differently as they looked into 
each other, and silently withdrew again, each 
I from each, not daring to communicate fur- 
ther. Just then a slight noise came below, 
to the door. Mrs. Vincent stood up directly 
In an agony of listening, trembling all over. 
To be sure it was nothing. When nothing 
came of it, the poor mother sank back again 
with a piteous patience, which it .was heart- 
breaking to look at ; and Vincent returned 
from the window which he had thrown open 
in time to see Phoebe Tozer disappear from 
the door. They avoided each other’s eyes 
now ; one or two heavy sobs broke forth 
from Mrs. Vincent’s breast, and her son 
walked with a dreadful funereal step from one 
I end of the room to the other. Not even the 
1 consolation of consulting together what was 
i to be done, or what might have happened, 
[ was left them. They dared not put their 
[ position into words — dared not so much as 
inquire in their thoughts where Susan was, 
or what had befallen her. She was to be 
brought home ; but whence or from what 
abyss neither ventured to say. 


191 

Upon their misery the little maid entered 
again with her tray, and the hastily prepared 
refreshment which Mrs. Vincent had ordered 
for her son. The girl’s eyes were round and 
staring with wonder and curiosity ; but she 
was aware, with female instinct, that the 
minister’s mother, awful little figure, with 
lynx eyes which nothing escaped, was watch- 
ing her, and her observations were nervous 
accordingly. “ Please, sir, it’s a chop,” said 
the girl — “ please, sir, missus sent to know 
was the other gentleman a-coming ? — and 
please, if ho is, there aint nowhere as missus 
knows of, as he can sleep — with the lady, 
and you, and all ; and the other lodgers as 
well ” — said the handmaiden with a sigh, as 
she set down her tray and made a desperate 
endeavor to turn her back upon Mrs. Vin- 
cent, and to read some interpretation of all 
this in the unguarded countenance of the 
minister ; “ and please, am I to bring up the 
W ooster sauce, and would the lady like 
I some tea or anythink ? And missus would 
be particklar obliged if you would say. Miss 
Phoebe’s been to ask the gentlemen to tea, 
but where he’s to sleep, missus says ” 

“Yes, yes, to be sure,” said Vincent, im- 
patiently ; “ he can have my room, tell your 
mistress — that will do — we don’t want any- 
thing more.” 

“ Mr. Vincent is going to leave town again 
this afternoon,” said his mother. “ Tell 
your mistress that I shall be glad to have a 
little conversation with her after my son goes 
away — and you had better bring the sauce 
— but it would have saved you trouble and 
been more sensible, if you had put it on the 
tray in the first place. O Arthur,” cried 
his mother again when she had seen the 
little maid fairly out— “ do be a little pru- 
dent, my dear ! When a minister lodges 
with one of his flock, he must think of ap- 
pearances — and if it were only for my dear 
child’s sake, Arthur ! Susan must not be 
spoken of through our anxiety ; O, my child I 
—Where can she be ? — Where can she be ? ” 

“Mother dear, you must keep up, or 
everything is lost ! ” cried Vincent, for the 
first time moved to the depths of his heart 
by that outcry of despair. He came to 
her and held her trembling hands, and 
laid his face upon them without any kiss 
or caress, that close clinging touch of 
itself expressing best the fellowship of 
their wretchedness. But Mrs. Vincent put 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


192 


her son away from her, when the door again 
bounced open. “ My dear boy, here is the 
sauce, and you must eat your chop,” she 
said, getting up and drawing forward a chair 
for him j her hands, which trembled so, grew 
steady as she. put everything in order, cut 
the bread, and set his plate before him. “Oh, 
eat something, Arthur dear — you must, or 
you cannot go through it,” said the widow, 
with her piteous smile. Then she sat down 
at the table by him in her defensive armor. 
The watchful eyes of “ the flock ” were all 
around spying upon the dreadful calamity 
which had overwhelmed them ; at any mo- 
ment the college companion whom Vincent 
had sent for might come in upon them in all 
the gayety of his holiday. What they said 
had to be said with this consciousness — and 
the mother, in the depth of her suspense and 
terror, sat like a queen inspected on all- sides, 
and with possible traitors round her, but 
resolute and self-commanding in her extrem- 
ity, determined at least to be true to her- 
self. . . 

“ Arthur, can you think where to go ? ” 
she said, after a little interval, almost under 
her breath. 

“ To London first,” said Vincent — “ to 
inquire after — him, curse him ! don’t say 
anything, mother — I am only a man after 
all. Then, according to the information I 
get. — God help us ! — if I don’t get back 
before another Sunday ” 

Mrs. Vincent gave a convulsive start, 
which shook the table against which she w'as 
leaning, and fell to shivering as if in a fit of 
ague. “ O Arthur, Arthur, what are you 
saying ? Another Sunday ! ” she exclaimed 
with a cry of despair. To live another day 
seemed impossible in that horror. But selL 
restraint was natural to the woman who had 
been, as she said, a minister’s wife for thirty 
years. She clasped her hands tight, and 
took up her burden again. “ I will see Mr. 
Beecher when he comes, dear, and — and 
speak to him,” she said with a sigh, “ and I 
W'ill see the Tozers and — your people, Ar- 
thur ; and if it should be God’s will to keep 
us long in suspense, if — if — I can keep alive, 
dear, I may be of some use. O Arthur, 
Arthur, the Lord have pity upon us ! if my 
darling comes back, will she come here or 
will she go home? Don’t you think she 
will come here ? If I go back to Lonsdale, 
I will not be able to rest for thinking she is 


at Carlingford ; and if I stay — O Arthur, 
where do you think Susan will go fo ? She 
might be afraid to see you, and think you 
w’ould be angry, but she never could dis- 
trust her poor mother, who was the first to 
put her in danger ; and to think of my dear 
child going either there or here, and not find- 
ing me, Arthur ! My dear, you are not eating 
anything. You can never go through it all 
-without some support. For my sake, try to 
eat a little, my own boy ; and O Arthur, 
what must I do ? ” 

“ These Tozers and people will worry you 
to death if you stay here,” said the minis- 
ter, with an impatient sigh, as he thought 
of his own difficulties ; “ but I must not 
lose time by going back with you to Lons- 
dale, and you must not travel by yourself, 
and this is more in the way, whatever hap- 
pens. Send word to Lonsdale that you are 
to have a message by telegraph immediately 
— without a moment’s loss of time — if she 
comes back.” 

“ You might say when, Arthur, not ?y’,” 
said his mother, with a little flash of tender 
resentment — then she gave way for the mo- 
ment, and leaned her head against his arm 
and held him fast with that pressure and 
close clasp which spoke more than any 
words. AVhen she raised her pale face 
again, it was to entreat him once more to 
eat. “ Try to take something, if it were 
only a mouthful, for Susan’s sake,” pleaded 
the widow. Her son made a dismal at- 
tempt as she told him. Happy are the 
houses that have not seen such dreadful pre- 
tences of meals where tears were the only 
possible food! When she saw him fairly 
engaged in this desperate efibrt to take 
“ some support,” the poor mother went away 
and wrote a crafty female letter, which she 
brought to him to read. He would have 
smiled at it had the occasion been less tragic. 
It was addressed to the minister of “the 
connection ” at Lonsdale, and set forth how 
she was detained at Carlingford by some 
family affairs — how Susan was visiting 
friends and travelling, and her mother was 
not sure where to address her — and how it 
would bo the greatest favor if he would see 
Williams at the cottage, and have a message 
despatched to Mrs. Vincent the moment hga: 
daughter returned. “ Do you not think it 
would be better to confide in him a little, 
and telLhim what anxiety we are in ? ” said 


CHRONICLES 01 

Vincent, »whcn he read this letter. His 
mother took it out of his hands with a little 
cry. 

“ O Arthur, though you are her brother, 
you are only a man, and don’t understand,” 
cried Mrs. Vincent. “ Nobody must have 
I anything to say about my child. If she 
j| comes to-night, she will come hero,” con- 
i tinned the poor mother, pausing instinctively 
once more to listen; “ she might have been 
1 detained somewhere ; she may come at any 
i moment — at any moment, Arthur dear ! 

■ Though these telegraphs frighten me, and 
i look as if they must bring bad news, I will 
' send you word directly when my darling girl 
comes ; but oh, my dear, though it is dread- 
I ful to send you away, and to think of your 
: travelling to-morrow and breaking the Sun- 
day, and very likely your people hearing it 
— O Arthur, God knows better, and will not 
blame you — and if you will not take any- 
thing more to eat, you should not lose time, 

' my dearest boy ! Don’t look at me, Arthur 
I* — don’t say good-by. Perhaps you may 
imeet her before you leave — perhaps you 
j may not need to go away. O Arthur dear, 

I don’t lose any more time ! ” 

“It is scarcely time for the train yet,” 

I said the minister, getting np slowly ; “ the 
1 world does not care, though our hearts are 
breaking ; it keeps its own time. Mother, 
good-by. God knows what may have hap- 
pened before I see you again.” 

“ O Arthur, say nothing — say nothing ! 
jWhat can happen but my child to come 
home ? ” cried his mother, as he clasped her 
hands and drew her closer to him. She 
leaned against her son’s breast, which heaved 
convulsively, for one moment, and no more. 
She did not look at him as he went slowly 
out of the room, leaving her to the unspeak- 
able silence and solitude in which every kind 
of terror started up and crept about. But 
before Vincent had left the house his moth- 
er’s anxiety and hope were once more excited 
to passion. Some one knocked and entered ; 
there was a sound of voices and steps on the 
stair audibly approaching this room in which 
she sat with her fears. But it was not Susan ; 
it was a young man of Arthur’s own age, 
wUh his travelling-bag in his hand, and his 
sermons in his pocket. He had no suspicion 
that the sight of him brought the chill of 
despair to her heart as he went up to shake 
hands with his friend’s mother. “ Vincent 

(jnilONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


CARLINGFORD. I 93 

would not come back to introduce me,” said 
Mr. Beecher, “ but he said I should find you 
here. I have known him many years, and 
it is a great pleasure to make your acquaint- 
ance. Sometimes he used to show me your 
letters years ago. Is Miss Vincent with 
you ? It is pleasant to get out of town for 
a little, even though one has to preach ; and 
they will all be interested in ’Omerton to 
hear how Vincent is getting on. Made 
quite a commotion in the world, they say, 
with these lectures of his. I alv/ays knew 
he would make an ’it if he had fair play.” 

“ I am very glad to see you,” said Mrs. 
Vincent. “ I have just come up from Lons- 
dale, and everything is in a confusion. 
When people grow old,” said the poor widow, 
busying herself in collecting the broken 
pieces of bread which Arthur had crumbled 
down by way of pretending to eat, “they 
feel fatigue and being put out of their way 
more than they ought. What can I get for 
you? will you have a glass of wine, and 
dinner as soon as it can be ready ? My son 
had to go away.” 

“ Preaching somewhere ? ” asked the 
lively Mr. Beecher. 

“N-no; he has some — private business 
to attend to,” said Mrs. Vincent, with a 
silent groan in her heart. 

“Ah! — going to be married, I suppose,” 
said the man from ’Omerton; “that’s the 
natural consequence after a man gets a 
charge. Miss Vincent is not with you, I 
think you said ? I’ll take a glass of wine, 
thank you ; and I hear one of the ‘flock has 
sent over to ask mo to tea — Mr. Tozer, a 
leading man, I believe, among our people 
here,” added Mr. Beecher, with a little com- 
placence. It’s very pleasant when a con- 
gregation is hospitable and friendly. When 
a pastor’s popular, you see, it always reacts 
upon his brethren. May I ask if you are 
going to Mr. Tozer’s to tea to-night ? ” 

“Oh, no,” faltered poor Mrs. Vincent, 
whom prudence kept from adding, “ heaven 
forbid!” “They — did not know I was 
here,” she continued faintly, turning away 
to ring the bell. Mr. Beecher, who flattered 
himself on his penetration, nodded slightly 
when her back was turned. “Jealous that 
they’ve asked me,” said the preacher, with a 
lively thrill of human satisfaction. How 
was he to know the blank of misery, the 
wretched feverish activity of thought, that 
13 


194 SALEM CHAPEL 


possessed that mild little woman, as she 
gave her orders about the removal of the 
tray, and the dinner which already was being 
prepared for the stranger ? But the lively 
young man from ’Omerton perceived that 
there was something wrong. Vincent’s 
black looks when he met him at the door, 
and the exceeding promptitude of that invi- 
tation to tea, were two and two which he 
could put together. He concluded directly 
that the pastor, though he had made “ an 
’it,” was not found to suit the connection in 
Carlingford ; and that possibly another can- 
didate for Salem might be required ere long. 
“ I would not injure Vincent for the world,” 
he said to himself, “ but if he does not ’it 
it, I might.” The thought was not unpleas- 
ant. Accordingly, while Vincent’s mother 
kept her place there in the anguish of her 
heart, thinking that perhaps, even in this 
dreadful extremity, she might be able to do 
something for Arthur with his people, and 
conciliate the authorities, her guest was 
thinking, if Vincent were to leave Carling- 
ford, what a pleasant distance from town it 
was, and how very encouraging of the Tozers 
to ask him to tea. It might come to some- 
thing more than preaching for a friend ; and 
if Vincent did not “ ’it it,” and a change 
were desirable, nobody could tell what might 
happen. All this smiling fabric the stranger 
built upon the discomposed looks of the 
Vincents and Phoebe’s invitation to tea. 

To sit by him and keep up a little attempt 
at conversation — to superintend his dinner, 
and tell Kim what she knew of Salem and 
her son’s lectures, and his success generally, 
as became the minister’s mother — was 
scarcely so hard as to be left afterwards, 
when he went out to Tozer’s, all alone once 
more with the silence, with the sounds out- 
side, with the steps that seem to come to the 
door, and the carriages that paused in the 
street, all sending dreadful thrills of hope 
through poor Mrs. Vincent’s worn-out heart. 
Happily, her faculties were engaged by those 
frequent and oft-repeated tremors. In the 
fever of her anxiety, always startled with an 
expectation that at last this was Susan, she 
did not enter into the darker question where 
Susan might really be, and what had be- 
fallen the unhappy girl. Half an hour after 
Mr. Beecher left her, Phoebe Tozer came 
in, affectionate and anxious, driving the 
wretched mother almost wild by the sound 


of her step and the apparition of Jicr young 
womanhood, to beg and pray that Mrs. \ in- 
cent would join them at their “ friendly tea.” 
“ And so this is Mr. Vincent’s room,” said 
Phoebe, with a bashful air; “it feels so 
strange to be here ! and you must be so dull 
when he is gone. Oh, do come, and let us 
try to amuse you a little ; though I am sure 
none of us could ever be such good company 
as the minister — oh, not half or quarter ! ” 
cried Phoebe. Even in the midst of her 
misery, the mother was woman enough to 
think that Phoebe showed too much interest 
in the minister. She declined the invitation 
with gentle distinctness. She did not return 
the enthusiastic kiss which was bestowed 
upon her. “ I am very tired, thank you,” 
said Mrs. Vincent. “ On Monday, if all is 
well, I will call to see your mamma. I hope 
you will not catch cold coming out in this 
thin dress. I am sure it was very kind of 
you ; but I am very tired to-night. On — 
Monday.” Alas, Monday ! could this hor- 
ror last so long, and she not die ? or would 
all be well by that time, and Susan in her 
longing arms ? The light went out of her 
eyes, and the breath from her heart, as that 
dreadful question stared her in the face. 
She scarcely saw Pheebe’s witljdrawal ; she 
lay back in her chair in a kind of dreadful 
trance, till those stumbling steps and pass- 
ing carriages began again, and roused her 
back into agonized life and bootless hope. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Vincent had shaken hands with his friend 
at the door, and hurried past, saying some- 
thing about losing the train, in order to 
escape conversation ; but, with the vivid 
perceptions of excitement, he heard the 
delivery of Phoebe’s message, and saw the 
complacence with which the Homerton man 
regarded the invitation which had antici- 
pated his arrival. The young Nonconform- 
ist had enough to think of as he took his 
way once more to the railway, and tea at 
Mrs. Tozer’s was anything but attractive to 
his own fancy ; yet in the midst of his 
wretchedness he could not overcome the 
personal sense of annoyance which this 
trifling incident produced. It came like a 
prick of irritating pain, to aggravate the 
dull horror which throbbed through him. 
He despised himself for being able to think 
of it at all, but at the same time it came 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


back to him, darting unawares again and 
again into his thoughts. Little as he cared 
for the enertainments and attention of his 
flock, he was conscious of a certain exasper- 
ation in discovering their eagerness to enter- 
tain another. He was disgusted with Phoebe 
for bringing the message, and disgusted with 
Beecher for looking pleased to receive it. 
“ Probably he thinks he will supersede me,” 
Vincent thought, in sudden gusts of disdain 
now and then, with a sardonic smile on his 
lip, waking up afterwards with a thrill of 
deeper self-disgust, to think that anything 
so insignificant had power to move him. 
AVhen he plunged off from Carlingford at 
last, in the early falling darkness of .the 
winter afternoon, and looked back upon the 
few lights struggling red through the even- 
ing mists, it "was with a sense of belonging 
to the place where he had left an interloper 
who might take his post over his head, 
which, perhaps, no other possible stimulant 
could have given him. He thought with a 
certain pang of Salem, and that pulpit which 
was his own, but in which another man should 
stand to-morrow, with a quickened thrill of 
something that was almost jealousy ; he won- 
dered what might be the sentiments of the 
connection about his deputy — perhaps Brown 
and Pigeon would perfer that florid voice to 
his own — perhaps Phoebe might find the sub- 
stitute more practicable than the incumbent. 
Nothing before had ever made Salem so 
interesting to the young pastor as Beecher’s 
complacence over that invitation to tea. 

But he had much more serious matters to 
consider in his rapid journey. Vincent was 
but a man, though he was Susan’s brother. 
He did not share those desperate hopes 
which afforded a kind of forlorn comfort and 
agony of expectation to his mother’s heart. 
No thought that Suasn would come home 
either to Carlingford or Lonsdale was in his 
mind. In what way soever the accursed 
villain, whom his face blanched with deadly 
rage to think of, had managed to get her in 
his power, Susan’s sweet life was lost, her 
brother knew. He gave her up with un- 
speakable anguish and pity ; but he did give 
her up, and hoped for no deliverance. Shame 
had taken possession of that image which 
fancy kept presenting in double tenderness 
and brightness to him as his heart burned 
in the darkness. He might find her indeed ; 
he might snatch her out of those polluting 


195 

arms, and bring home the sullied lily to her 
mother, but never henceforward could hope 
or honor blossom abojit his sister’s name. 
He made up his mind to that in grim mis- 
ery, with his teeth clenched, and a despera- 
tion of rage and horror in his heart. But 
in proportion to his conviction that Susan 
would not return, was his eagnerness to find 
her, and snatch her away. To think of her 
in horror and despair was easier than to 
think of her deluded and happy, as might 
be — as most probably was the case. This 
latter possibility made Vincent frantic. He 
could scarcely endure the slowness of the 
motion which was the highest pitch of speed 
that skill and steam had yet made possible. 
No express train could travel so fast as the 
thoughts which went before him, dismal 
pioneers penetrating the most dread abysses. 
To think of Susan happy in her horrible 
downfall and ruin was more than flesh or 
blood could bear. 

When Vincent reached town, he took his 
way without a moment’s hesitation to the 
street in Piccadilly where he had once 
sought Mr. Fordham. He approached the 
place now with no precautions ; he had his 
cab driven up to the door, and boldly entered 
as soon as it was opened. The house was 
dark and silent but for the light in the nar- 
row hall ; nobody there at that dead hour, 
while it was still too early for dinner. And 
it was not the vigilant owner of the place, 
but a drowsy helper in a striped jacket who 
presented himself at the door,„g,nd replied 
to Vincent’s inquiry for Colonel Mildmay, 
that the Colonel was not at home — never 
w^as at home at that hour — but was not un- 
willing to inquire if the gentleman would 
wait. Vincent put up the collar of his coat 
about his ears, and stood back with eager 
attention, intently alive to everything. Evi- 
dently the ruler of the house was absent as 
well as the Colonel. The man lounged to 
the staircase and shouted down, leaning 
upon the bannisters. No aside or conceal- 
ment was possible in this perfectly easy 
method of communication. With an anxiety 
strongly at variance with the colloquy thus 
going on, and an intensification of all his 
faculties which only the height of excitement 
could give, Vincent stood back and listened. 
He heard every step that passed outside; 
the pawing of the horse in the cab that 
waited for him, the chance voices of the 


196 SALEM CHAPEL. 


[iassengers, all chiming in, without inter- 
rupting the conversation between the man 
W'ho admitted him and his fellow-servant 
down-stairs. 

Jim, is the Colonel at home ? — he ain’t, 
to be sure, but we wants to know particklar. 
Here,” in a slightly lowered voice, “ his 
mother’s been took bad, and the parson’s 
sent for him. When is he agoing to be in 
to dinner? Ask Cookie, she’ll be sure to 
know.” 

“ The Colonel ain’t coming in 'to dinner, 
stoopid,” answered the unseen interlocutor ; 
“ he ain’t been here all day. Out o’ town. 
Couldn’t you say so, instead of jabbering? 
Out o’ town. It’s allays safe to say, and this 
time it’s true.” 

“ What’s he adoing of, in case the gen’l- 
man should want to know ? ” said the fellow 
at the head of the stair. 

“ After mischief,” was the brief and em- 
phatic answer. “You come along dowm to 
your work, and let the Colonel alone.” 

“ Any mischief in particklar ? ” continued 
the man, tossing a dirty napkin in his hand, 
and standing in careless contempt, with his 
back to the minister. “ It’s a pleasant way 
the Colonel’s got, that is ; any more partick- 
iars, Jim ? — the gen’leman ’ll stand some- 
thing if you’ll let him know.” 

“ Hold your noise, stoopid — it ain’t no 
concern o’ yours — my master’s my master, 
and I ain’t agoing to tell his seccets,” said 
the voice below. Vincent had made a step 
forward, divided between his impulse to kick 
the impertinent fellow who had admitted 
him down-stairs, and the equally strong im- 
pulse which prompted him to offer any bribe 
to the witness who knew his master’s secrets ; 
but he was suddenly arrested in both by a 
step on the street outside, and the grating 
of a latch-key in the door. A long light 
step, firm and steady, with a certain senti- 
ment of rapid silent progress in it. Vin- 
cent could not tell what strange fascination 
it was that made him turn round to watch 
this new'-comer. The stranger’s approach 
thrilled him vaguely, he could not tell how. 
Then the door opened, and a man appeared 
like the footstep — a very tall slight figure, 
stooping forward a little ; a pale oval face, 
too long to be handsome, adorned with a 
long brown beard j thoughtful eyes, with a 
distant gleam in them, now and then flash- 
ing into sudden penetrating glances — a loose 


dress too light for the season, which some- 
how carried out all the peculiarities of the 
long light step, the thin sinewy form, the 
thoughtful softness and keenness of the eye. 
Even in the height of his own suspense and 
excitement, Vincent paused to ask himself 
who this could be. He came in with one 
sudden glance at the stranger in the hall, 
passed him, and calling to the man, w'ho be- 
came on the moment respectful and atten- 
tive, asked if there were any letters. “ What 
name, sir? — ^beg your pardon — my place 
ain’t up-stairs,” said the fellow. What was 
the name ? Vincent rushed forward when 
he heard it, and seized the new-comer by 
thq shoulder with the fierceness of a tiger. 
“ Fordham ! ” cried the young man, with 
boiling rage and hatred. Next moment he 
had let go his grasp, and was gazing bewil- 
dered upon the calm stranger, who looked 
at him with merely a thoughtful inquiry in 
his eyes. “ Fordham — at your service — do 
you want anything with me ? ” he asked, 
meeting with undiminished calm the young 
man’s excited looks. This composure put 
a sudden curb on Vincent’s passion. 

“My name is Vincent,” he said, sustain- 
ing himself with an effort, “ do you know' 
now what I want with you? No ? Am I 
to believe your looks or your name ? If you 
are the man,” cried the young Nonconform- 
ist, with a groan out of his distracted heart, 
“ whom Lady Western could trust with life 
to death — or if you are a fiend incarnate, 
making misery and ruin, you shall not 
escape me till I know the truth. Where is 
Susan ? Here is where her innocent letters 
came — they were addressed to your name. 
Where is she now ? Answ'er me ! For you, 
as well as the rest of us, it is life or death.” 

“You are raving,” said the stranger, keep- 
ing his awakened eyes fixed upon Vincent ; 
“ but this is easily settled. I returned from 
the East only yesterday. I don’t know you. 
What was that you said about Lady — Lady 
— what lady ? Come in : and my name ? — 
my name has been unheard in our country, 

so far as I know, for ten years. Lady ? 

— come in and explain what you mean.” 

The tw'o stood together confronting each 
other in the little parlor of the house, where 
the striped jacket quickly and humbly 
lighted the gas. Vincent’s face, haggard 
with misery and Want of rest, looked wdld 
in that sudden light. The stranger stood 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 197 


opposite him, leaning forward with a strange 
eagerness and inquiry. He did not care for 
Vincent’s anxiety, who was a stranger to 
him ; he cared only to hear again that name 

— Lady ? He had heard it already, or 

he would have been less curious ; he wanted 
to understand this wonderful message wafted 
to him out of his old life. What did it 
matter to Herbert Fordham, used to the 
danger of the deserts and mountains, whether 
it was a maniac who brought this chance 
seed of a new existence to his wondering 
i heart? 

“ A man called Fordham has gone into 
I my mother’s house,” said Vincent, fixing his 
i eyes upon those keen but visionary orbs 
^ which were fixed on him— “ and won the 
love of my sister. She wrote to him here — 
to this house ; yesterday he carried her 
away, to her shame and destruction. An- 
swer me,” cried the young man, making 
, another fierce step forward, growing hoarse 
with passion, and clenching his hands in in- 
voluntary rage — “ was it you ? ” 

“ There are other men called Fordham in 
existence besides me,” cried the stranger, 
with a little irritation; then seizing his 
loose coat by its pockets, he shook out, with 
a sudden impatient motion, a cloud of let- 
ters from these receptacles. “ Because you 
seem in great excitement and distress, and 
yet are not, as far as I can judge,” said Mr. 
Fordham, with another glance at Vincent, 
“ mad, I will take pains to satisfy you ; look 
at my letters; their dates and post-marks 
; will convince you that what you say is sim- 
' ply impossible, for that I was not here.” 

Vincent clutched and took them up with 
a certain blind eagerness, not knowing what 
he did. He did not look at them to satisfy 
! himself that what Fordham said was true. 

I A wild, hal/-conscious idea that there must 
i be something in them about Susan possessed 
I him ; he saw neither dates nor post-mark, 

; though he held them up to the light, as if 
they were proofs of something. “ No,” he 
said at last, “ it was not you— it was that 
fiend Mildmay, Rachel Russell’s husband. 
Where is he ? he has taken’your name, and 
made you responsible for his devilish deeds. 
Help me, if you are a Christian ! My sister 
is in his hands, curse him ! Help me, for the 
sake of your name, to find them out. I am 
a stranger, and they will give me no infor- 
mation ; but they will tell you. For God’s 


sake, ask and let me go after them. If ever 
you were beholden to the help of Christian 
men, help me ! for it is life and death ! ” 

“ Mildmay ! Rachel Russell’s husband ? 
under my name ? ” said Mr. Fordham, 
slowly. “ I have been beholden to Chris- 
tian men, and that for very life. You make 
a strong appeal : who are you that are so 
desperate ? and what was that you said ^ ” 

“ I am Susan Vincent’s brother,” said the 
young Nonconformist ; “ that is enough. 
This devil has taken your name ; help me, 
for heaven’s sake, to find him out ! 

“Mildmay? devil? yes, he is a devil! 
you are right enough ; I owe him no love,” 
said Fordham ; then he paused and turned 
away, as if in momentary perplexity. “ To 
help that villain to his reward would be a 
man’s duty ; but,” said the stranger, with a 
heavy sigh upon which his words came in- 
voluntarily, spoken to himself, breathing out 
pf his heart — “ he is her brother, devil, 
though he is.” 

“ Yes ! ” cried Vincent, with passion, “ he 
is her brother.” When he had said the 
words, the young man groaned aloud. 
Partly he forgot that this man, who looked 
upon him with so much curiosity, was the 
man who had brought tears and trembling 
to Her ; partly he remembered it, and for- 
got his jealousy for the moment in a bitter 
sense of fellow-feeling. In his heart he 
could see her, waving her hand to him out 
of her passing carriage, with that smile for 
which he would have risked his life. Oh, 
hideous fate ! it was her brother whom he 
was bound to pursue to the end of the world. 
He buried his face in his hands, in a mo- 
mentary madness of anguish and passion. 
Susan floated away like a mist from that 
burning personal horizon. The love and the 
despair were too much for Vincent. The 
hope that had always been impossible was 
frantic now. When he recovered himself, 
the stranger whom he had thus unawares 
taken into his confidence was regarding him 
haughtily from the other side of the table, 
with a fiery light in his thoughtful eyes. 
Suspicion, jealousy, resentment, had begun 
to sparkle in those orbs, which in repose 
looked so far away and lay so calm. Mr. 
Fordham measured the haggard and worn- 
out young man with a look of rising dislike 
and animosity. He was at least ten years 
older than the young Nonconformist, who 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


198 

stood there in his wretchedness and exhaus- 
tion entirely at disadvantage, looking, in his 
half-clerical dress, which he had not changed 
for four-and-twenty hours, as different as 
can be conceived from the scrupulously 
dressed gentleman in his easy morning 
habiliments, which would not have been out i 
of place in the rudest scene, yet spoke of 
personal nicety and high-breeding in every 
easy fold. Vincent himself felt the contrast 
with an instant flush of answering jealousy 
and passion. For a moment the two glanced 
at each other, conscious rivals, though not a 
word of explanation had been spoken. It 
was Mr. Fordham who spoke first, and in a 
somewhat hasty and imperious tone. 

“ You spoke of a lady — Lady Western, I 
think. As it was you yourself who sought 
this interview, I may be pardoned if I stum- 
ble on a painful subject,” he said, with some 
bitterness. I presume you know that lady 
by your tone — was it she who sent you to 
me ? No ? Then I confess your appeal to 
a total stranger seems to me singular, to say 
the least of it. Where is your proof that 
Colonel Mildmay has used my name ? ” 

“ Proof is unnecessary,” said Vincent, 
firing with kindred resentment ; “ I have 
told you the fact, but I do not press my 
appeal, though it was made to your honor. 
Pardon me for intruding on you so long. I 
have now no time to lose.” 

He turned away, stung in his hasty youth- 
fulness by the appearance of contempt. He 
would condescend to ask no further. When 
he was once more outside the parlor, he 
held up the half-sovereign, which he had 
kept ready in his hand, to the slovenly fel- 
low in the striped jacket. “ Twice as much 
if you will tell where Colonel Mildmay is 
gone,” he said, hurriedly. The man winked 
and nodded and pointed outside, but before 
Vincent could leave the room a hasty sum- 
mons came from the parlor which he had 
lust left. Then Mr. Fordham appeared at 
the door. 

If you will wait I will make what in- 
quiries I can,” said the stranger, with dis- 
tant courtesy and seriousness. “Excuse 
me, I was taken by surprise ; but if you 
have suffered injury under my name, it is 
my business to vindicate myself. Come in. 
If you will take my advice, you will rest and 
refresh yourself before you pursue a man 
with all his wits about him. Wait for me I 


! here and I will bring you what information 
I can. You don’t -suppose I mean to play 
you false ? ” he added, with prompt irrita- 
tion, seeing that Vincent hesitated and did 
not at once return to the room. It was no 
relenting of heart that moved him to make 
this ofier. It was with no softening of feel- 
ing that the young Nonconformist went back 
again and accepted it. They met like ene- 
mies, each on his honor. Mr. Fordham 
hastened out to acquit himself of that obli- 
gation. Vincent threw him self into a chair, 
and waited for the result. It was the first 
moment of rest and quiet he had known 
since the morning of the previous day, when 
he and his mother, alarmed but compara- 
tively calm, had gone to see Mrs. Hilyard, 
who was now, like himself, wandering, with 
superior knowledge and more desperate 
passion, on the same track. To sit in this 
house in the suspicious silence, hearing the 
distant thrill of voices which might guide 
or foil him in his search ; to think who it 
was whom he had engaged to heljD him in 
his terrible mission ; to go over again in 
distracted gleams and snatches the brief 
little circle of time which had brought all 
this about, the group of figures into which 
his life had been absorbed, — rapt the young 
man into a maze of excited musing, which 
his exhausted frame at once dulled and in- 
tensified. They seemed to stand round him, 
with their faces so new yet so familiar — 
that needlewoman with her emphatic mouth 
— Mildmay — Lady Western — last of all, 
this man, who was not Susan’s lover — not 
Susan’s destroyer — but a man to be trusted 
“ with life — to death ! ” Vincent put up 
his hands to put away from him that won- 
derful circle of strangers who shut out 
everything else in the world — even his own 
life — from his eyes. What w^e they to 
him ? he asked, with an unspeakable bitter- 
ness in his heart. Heaven help him ! they 
were the real creatures for whom life and the 
world were made— he and his poor Susan 
the shadows to be absorbed into, and under 
them ; and then, with a wild, bitter, hope- 
less rivalry, the mind of the poor Dissenting 
minister came round once more to the im- 
mediate contact in which he stood — to Ford- 
ham, in whose name his sister’s life had 
been shipwrecked, and by whom, as he 
divined with cruel foresight, his own hope- 
less love and dreams were to be made an 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


end of. Well! what better could they 
come to ? but it was hard to think of him, 
with his patrician looks, his negligent grace, 
his conscious superiority, and to submit to 
accept assistance from him even in the 
sorest need. These thoughts were in his 
mind when Mr. Fordham hastily re-entered 
the room. A thrill of excitement now was 
in the long, lightly-falling step, which 
already Vincent, with the keen ear of 
rivalry, almost as quick as that of love, 
could recognize as it approached. The 
stranger was disturbed out of his compos- 
ure. He shut the door and came up to the 
young man, who rose to meet him, with a 
certain excited repugnance and attraction 
much like Vincent’s own feelings. 

“You are quite right,” he said, hastily ; 
“ I find letters have been coming here for 
some months, addressed as if to me, which 
Mildmay has had. The man of the house 
is absent, or I should never have heard of 
it. I don’t know what injury he may have 
done you ; but this is an insult I don’t for- 
give. Stop ! I have every reason to believe 
that he has gone,” said Fordham, growing 
darkly red, “to a house of mine, to confirm 
this slander upon me. To prove that I am 
innocent of all share in it — I don’t mean to 
you — you believe me, I presume? ” he. said, 
with a haughty sudden pause, looking 
straight in Vincent’s face — “I will go — ” 
here Mr. Fordham stopped again, and once 
more looked at Vincent with that indiscrib- 
able mixture of curiosity, dislike, resent- 
ment, and interest, which the eyes of the 
young Nonconformist repaid him fully, — 
“ with you — if you choose. At all events, I 
will go to-night— to Fordham, where the 
scoundrel is. I cannot permit it to be be- 
lieved for an hour that it is I who have done 
this villany. The lady you mentioned, I 
presume, knows?” — he added, sharply — 
“ knows what has happened, and whom you 
suspect? This must be set right at once. 
If you choose, we can go together.” 

“Where is the place?” asked Vincent, 
without any answer to this proposition. 

Fordham looked at him with a certain 
haughty offence : he had made the offer as 
though it were a very disagreeable expedient, 
but resented instantly the tacit neglect of it 
shown by his companion. 

“In Northumberland — seven miles from 
the railway,” he said, with a kind of gratifi- 


cation. “Once more, I say, you 
with me if you will, which may se 
both. I don’t pretend to be disintert 
My object is to have my reputation clear 
this, at all events. Your object, I presum 
is to get to your journey’s end as early as 
may- be. Choose for yourself. Fordham is 
between Durham and Morpeth — seven miles 
from Lamington station. You will find dif- 
ficulty in getting there by yourself, and still 
greater difficulty in getting admission j and 
I repeat, if you choose it, you can go with 
me — or I will accompany you, if that pleases 
you better. Either way, there is little time 
to consider. The train goes at eight or nine 
o’clock — I forget which. I have have not 
dined. What shall you do ? ” 

“ Thank you,” said Vincent. It was per- 
haps a greater effort to him to overcome his 
involuntary repugnance than it was to the 
stranger beside him, who had all the supe- 
rior ease of superior rank and age. The 
Nonconformist turned away his eyes from 
his new companion, and made a pretence of 
consulting his watch. “ I will take advan- 
tage of your offer,” he said, coldly, with- 
drawing a step with instinctive reserve. On 
these diplomatic terms their engagement 
was made. Vincent declined to share the 
dinner which the other offered him, as one 
duellist might offer hospitality to another. 
He drove away in his Hansom, with a re- 
strained gravity of excitement, intent upon 
the hour’s rest and the meal which were 
essential to make him anything like a match 
for this unexpected travelling companion. 
Every morsel he attempted to swallow when 
in Carlingford under his mother’s anxious 
eyes, choked the excited young man ; but 
now he ate with a certain stern appetite, and 
even snatched an hour’s sleep and changed 
his dress, under this novel stimulant. Poor 
Susan, for whom her mother sat hopelessly 
watching with many a thrill of agony at 
home! Poor lost one, far away in the 
depths of the strange country in the night 
and darkness ! Whether despair and hoiTor 
enveloped her, or delirious false happiness 
and delusion, again she stood secondary 
even in her brother’s thoughts. He tried to 
imagine it was she who occupied his mind, 
and wrote a hurried note to his mother to 
that purport ; but with guilt and self-dis- 
gust, knew in his own mind how often an- 
other shadow stood between him and his 


SALEM 

.f — a shadow bitterly veiled from 
^rning its sweetness and its smiles 
the man who was about to help him, 
.nst whom he gnashed his teeth in the 
guish of his heart. 

CHAPTER XX. 

They were but these two in the railway- 
carriage; no other passengers broke the 
silent conflict of their companionship. They 
sat in opposite corners, as far apart as their 
space would permit, but on opposite sides 
of the carriage as well, so that one could 
not move without betraying his every move- 
ment to the other’s keen observation. Each 
of them kept possession of a window, out 
of w'hich he gazed into the visible blackness 
of the winter night. Two or three times in 
the course of the long darksome chilly jour- 
ney, a laconic remark was made by one or 
the other with a deadly steadiness, and grav- 
ity, and facing of each other as they spoke ; 
but no further intercourse took place between 
them. When they first met, Eordham had 
made an attempt to draw his fellow-traveller 
into repetition of that first passionate speech 
which had secured his own attention to Vin- 
cent ; but the young Nonconformist per- 
ceived the attempt, and resented it with 
sullen ofi'ence and gloom. He took the 
stranger’s indifierence to Ms trouble, and 
undisguised and simple purpose of acquit- 
ting himself, as somehow an afiront, though 
he could not have explained how it was so ; 
and this notwithstanding his own conscious- 
ness of realizing this silent conflict and 
rivalry with Fordham, even more deeply in 
his own person than he did the special mis- 
ery which had befallen his house. Through 
the sullen silent midnight the train dashed 
on, the faint light flickering in the unsteady 
carriage, the two speechless figures, with 
eyes averted, watching each other through 
all the ice-cold hours. It was morning when 
they got out, cramped and frozen, at the 
little station, round which miles and miles 
of darkness, a black unfathomable ocean, 
seemed to lie — and which shone there with 
its little red sparkle of light among its wild 
waste of moors like the one touch of human 
life in a desert. They had a dreary hour to 
wait in the little w'ooden room by the stifling 
fire, divided between the smothering atmos- 
phere within and the thrilling cold without, 
before a conveyance could be procured for 


CHAPEL. 

them, in which they set out shivering over 
the seven darkling miles between them and 
Fordham. Vincent stood apart in elaborate 
indifference and carelessness, when the squire 
W'as recognized and done homage to; and 
Fordham’s eye, even while lighted up by the 
astonished delight of the welcome given him 
by the driver of the vehicle who first found 
him out, turned instinctively to the Morde- 
cai in the corner who took no heed. No 
conversation between them diversified the 
black road along which they drove. Mr. 
Fordham took refuge in the driver, whom 
he asked all those questions about the peo- 
ple of the neighborhood which are so inter- 
esting to the inhabitants of a district and so 
wearisome to strangers. Vincent, who sat 
in the dog-cart with his face turned the 
other way, suffered himself to be carried 
through the darkness by the powerful horse, 
which made his own seat a somewhat peril- 
ous one, with nothing so decided in his 
thoughts as a dumb sense of opposition and 
resistance. The general misery of his mind 
and body — the sense that all the firmament 
around him was black as the sky — the rest- 
less wretchedness that oppressed his heart 
— all concentrated into conscious rebellion 
and enmity. He seemed to himself at war, 
not only with Mr. Fordham who was help- 
ing him, but with God and life. 

Morning was breaking when they reached 
the house. The previous day, as it dawned 
chilly over the world, had revealed his 
mother’s ashy face to Vincent as they camo 
up from Lonsdale with sickening thrills of 
hope that Susan might still be found un- 
harmed. Here was another horror of a new 
day rising, the third since Susan disappeared 
into that darkness which was now lifting in 
shuddering mists from the bleak country 
round. Was she here in her shame, the lost 
creature ? As he began to ask himself that 
question, what cruel spirit was it that drew 
aside a veil of years, and showed to the un- 
happy brother that prettiest dancing figure, 
all smiles and sunshine, sweet honor and 
hope ? Poor lost child ! what s'weet eyes, 
lost in an unfathomable light of joy and con- 
fidence — what truthful looks, which feared 
no evil ! Just as they came in sight of that 
hidden house, where perhaps the hidden, 
stolen creature lay in the darkness, the 
brightest picture flashed back upon Vin- 
cent’s eyes with an indescribably subtle an- 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 201 

guisli of contrast ; how ho had come up to went round to another entrance, where he 
her bncc — the frank, fair Saxon girl — in the too began to knock, calling at the same time 
midst of a group of gypsies — how he found , to the unseen keepers of the place. After 


she had done a service to one of them, and 
the whole tribe did homage — how he had 
asked, “ Wore you not afraid, Susan ? ” and 
how the girl had looked up at him with un- 
doubting eyes, and answered, “ Afraid, Ar*> 


awhile some answering sounds became audi- 
ble — first the feeble yelping of an asthmatic 
dog, then a commotion up-stairs, and at last 
a window was thrown up, and a female head 
enveloped in a shawl looked out. “Eh, 


thur? — yes, of wild beasts if I saw them, ' whae are ye ? vagabond villains, — and this a 
not of men and women.” Oh, Heaven ! — gentleman’s house,” cried a cracked voice, 
and here he was going to find her in shame ^ “ I’ll let the squire know — I’ll rouse the man- 
and ruin, hidden away in this secret place ! [ servants. Tramps ! what are you wanting 
He sprang to the ground before the vehicle | here ? ” The driver of the dog-cart took up 
had stopped, jarring his frozen limbs. He -the response well pleased. He announced 
could not bear to be second now, and follow I the arrival of the squire, to the profound 
to the dread discovery which should be his | agitation of the house, which showed itself 
alone. He rushed through the shrubbery , in a variety of scuffling sounds and the wild- 
without asking any question, and began to est exclamations of wonder. Vincent leaned 
knock violently at the door. What did it i his throbbing head against the door, and 
matter to him though its master was there, ; waited in a dull fever of impatience and ex- 
looking on with folded arms and unsympa- | citement, as these noises gradually came 
thetic face ? Natural love rushed back to nearer. When the door itself was reached 
the young man’s heart. He settled with j and hasty hands began to unfasten its bolts. 


himSelf, as he stood waiting, how he would 
wrap her in his coat, and hurry her away 
without letting any cold eye fall upon the 
lost creature. Oh, hard and cruel fate ! oh, 
wonderful, heart-breaking indifference of 
Heaven ! The Innocents are murdered, and 
God looks on like a man, and docs not in- 
terfere. Such are the broken thoughts of 
misery — half thought, half recollection — that 
ran through Vincent’s mind as he knocked 
at the echoing door. 

“Eugh! you may knock, and better 
knock, and I’se undertake none comes at 
the ca’,” said the driver, not without a little 
complacence. “ I tell the squire, as there 
han’t been man nor woman -here for ages; 
but he don’t believe me. She’s deaf as a 
post, is the housekeeper ; and her daughter, 
she’s more to do nor hear when folks is 
wanting in— and this hour in the morning ! 
But canny, canny, man ! he’ll have the door 
staved in if we all stand by and the squire 
don’t interfere.” 

Vincent paid no attention to the remon- 
strance — which, indeed, he only remembered 
afterwards, and did not hear at the moment. 
The house was closely shut in with trees, 
which made the gloom of morning darker 
here than in the open road, and increased 
the aspect of secrecy which had impressed 
the young man’s excited imagination. While 
he went on knocking, Fordham alighted and 


Susan’s brother pressed alone upon the 
threshold, forgetful and indifferent that 
the master of the house stood behind, 
watching him with close and keen observa- 
tion. He forgot whose house it was, and all 
about his companion. What were such ch- 
cumstances to him, as he approached the 
conclusion of his search, and thought every 
moment to hear poor Susan’s cry of shame 
and terror ? He made one hasty stride into 
the hall when the door was open, and looked 
round him with burning eyes^ The wonder 
with which the women inside looked at him, 
their outcry of disappointment and anger 
when they found him a stranger, coming 
first as he did, and throwing the squire en- 
tirely into the shade, had no effect upon the 
young man, who was by this time half fran- 
tic. He went up to the elder woman and 
grasped her by the arm. “ Where is she? 
show me the way ! ” he said, hoarsely, una- 
ble to utter an unnecessary word. He held 
the terrified woman fast, and thrust her be- 
fore him, he could not tell where, into the 
unknown house, all dark and miserable in 
the wretchedness of the dawn. “ Show me 
the way ! ” he cried with his broken hoarse 
voice. A confused and inarticulate scene 
ensued, which Vincent remembered after- 
wards only like a dream ; the woman’s 
scream — the interferance of Fordham, upon 
whom his fellow-traveller turned with sud- 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


202 

den fury — the explanation to ■which he lis- 
tened without understanding it, and which 
at first roused him to wild rage as a pre- 
tence and falsehood. But even Vincent. at 
last, struggling into soberer consciousness 
as the day broadened ever chiller and more 
gi*ay over the little group of strange faces 
round him, came to understand and make 
out that both Fordham and he had been de- 
ceived. Nobody had been there — letters 
addressed both to Fordham himself, and to 
Colonel Mildmay, had been for some days 
received ; but these, it appeared, were only 
a snare laid to withdraw the pursuers from 
the right scent. Not to be convinced, in the 
sullen stupor of his excitement, Vincent fol- 
lo^ted Fordham into all the gloomy corners 
of the neglected house — seeing everything 
without knowing what he saw. But one 
thing was plain beyond the possibility of 
doubt, that Susan was not there. 

“ I am to blame for this fruitless journey,” 
said Fordham, with a touch of sympathy 
more than he had yet exhibited j “ perhaps 
personal feeling had too much share in it ; 
now I trust you will have some breakfast 
before you set out again. So far as my 
assistance can be of any use to you ” 

“ I thank you,” said Vincent, coldly ; “ it 
is a business in which a stranger can have 
no interest. You have done all you cared 
to do,” continued the young man, hastily 
gathering up the overcoat which he had 
thrown down on entering; “you have vin- 
dicated yourself — I will trouble you no fur- 
ther. If I encounter any one interested in 
Mr. Fordham,” he concluded, with difficulty 
and bitterness, but with a natural generosity 
which, even in his despair, he could not bely, 
“ I will do him justice.” He made an abrupt 
end, and turned away, not another word 
being possible to him. Fordham, not with- 
out a sentiment of sympathy, followed him 
to the door, urging refreshment, rest, even 
his own society, upon his companion of the 
night. Vincent’s face, more and more hag- 
gard — ^liis exhausted excited air — the poig- 
nant wretchedness of his youth, on which 
the older man looked, not without reminis- 
cences, awoke the sympathy and compassion 
of the looker-on, even in the midst of less 
kindly emotions. But Fordham’s sympathy 
was intolerable to poor Vincent. He took his 
seat with a sullen weariness once more by 
the talkative driver, who gave him an un- 


heeded history of all the Fordhams. As 
they drove along the bleak moorland road, 
an early church-bell tingled into the silence, 
and struck, with horrible iron echoes, upon 
the heart of the minister of Salem. Sunday 
morning ! Life all disordered, incoherent, 
desperate— all its usages set at nought and 
duties left behind. Nothing could have 
added the final touch of conscious derange- 
ment and desperation like the sound of that 
bell ; all his existence and its surroundings 
floated about him in feverish clouds, as it 
came to his mind that this wild morning, 
hysterical with fatigue and excitement, was 
the Sunday — the day of his special labors — 
the central point of all his former life. 
Chaos gloomed around the poor minister, 
who, in his misery, was human enough to re- 
member Beecher’s smile and Phoebe Tozer’s 
invitation, and to realize how all the “ Chapel 
folks” would compare notes, and contrast 
their own pastor, to whom they had become 
accustomed, with the new voice from Homer- 
ton, which, half in pride and half in disgust, 
Vincent acknowledged to be more in their 
way. He fancied he could see them all col- 
lecting into their mean pews, prepared to 
inaugurate the “ coorse ” for which Tozer 
had struggled, and the ofience upon their 
faces w'hen the minister’s absence was knowm, 
and the sharp stimulus which that ofience 
would give to their appreciation of the new 
preacher, — all this, while he was driving 
over the bleak Northumberland wilds, with 
the cutting wind from the hills in his 
face, and the church-bell in his distracted 
ear, breaking the Sunday ! Not a bright 
spot, so far as he could perceive, was any- 
where round him, in earth, or sky, or sea. 

Sunday night! — once more the church- 
bells, the church-going groups, the floating 
world, w-hich he had many a time upbraided 
from the pulpit, seeking its pleasure. ' But 
it was in London now, where he stood in 
utter exhaustion, but incapable of rest, not 
knowing where to turn. Then the thought 
occurred to him that something might be 
learned at the railway stations of a party 
which few people could see without remark- 
ing it. He waited till the bustle of arrival 
was over, and then began to question the 
porters. One after another shook his head, 
and had nothing to say. But the men were 
interested, and gathered in a little knot 
round him, trying what they could recollect, 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 203 


with the ready humanity of their class. 
“ I’d speak to the detective police, sir, if I 
was you,” suggested one ; “ it’s them as 
finds out all that happens now-a-days.” Then 
a little gleam of light penetrated the dark- 
ness. One man began to recall a light- 
haired gentleman with a mustache, and two 
ladies, who “went off sudden in a cab, with 
no luggage.” “ An uncommon swell he did 
look,” said the porter, instinctively touching 
his cap to Vincent, on the strength of the 
connection ; “ and, my eyes, she was- a 
beauty, that one in the blue veil. • It was — 
let me see — Wednesday night; no — not 
Wednesday — that day as the up-train was 
an hour late — Friday afternoon, to be sure. 
It was me as called the cab, and I won’t deny 
as the gen’leman ivas a gen’leman. Went 
to the London Bridge station, sir ; Dover 
line, no luggage ; I took particular notice at 
the time, though it went out o’ my head first 
minute as you asked me.—- Cab, sir ? Yes. 
Here you are— here’s the last on the stand. 

I — London Bridge station, Dover line.” 

I Vincent took no time to inquire further, 
j In the impatience of his utter weariness and 
i wretchedness, he seized on this slight clue, 

' and went off at once to follow it out. Lon- 
don Bridge station ! — what a world swarmed 
: in those streets through which the anxious 
! minister took his way, far too deeply ab- 
1 sorbed in himself to think of the flood of 
! souls that poured past him. The station w'as 
in wild bustle and commotion ; a train just 
on the eve of starting, and late passengers 
(dashing towards it with nervous speed. 
Vincent followed the tide instinctively, and 
stood aside to watch the long line of car- 
riages set in motion. He was not thinking 
of what he saw; his whole mind was set 
upon the inquiry, which, as soon as that ob- 
ject of universal interest was gone, he could 
set on foot among the officials who were 
clanging the doors, and uttering all the final 
shrieks of departure. Now the tedious line 
glides into gradual motion. Good Heaven ! 
what was that ? the flash of a match, a sud- 
den gleam upon vacant cushions, the profile 
of a face, high-featured, with the thin light 
locks and shadowy mustache he knew so 
well, standing out for a moment in aquiline 
distinctness against the moving space. Vin- 
cent rushed forward with a hoarse shout, 
which scared the crowd around him. He 
threw himself upon the moving train with a 


desperate attempt to seize and stop it ; but 
only to be himself seized by the frantic 
attendants, who caught him with a dozen 
hands. The travellers in the later carriages 
were startled by the commotion. Some of 
them rose and looked out with surprised 
looks ; he saw them all as they glided past, ^ 
though the passage was instantaneous. Saw 
them all ! Yes ; who was that, last of all, 
at the narrow window of a second-class car- 
riage, who looked out with no surprise, but 
with a horrible composure in her white face, 
and recognized him with a look which chilled 
him to stone. He stood passive in the hands 
of the men, who had been struggling to hold 
him, after he encountered those eyes; he 
shuddered with a sudden horror, which made 
the crowd gather closer, believing him a 
maniac. Now it was gone Jftto the black 
night, into the chill space, carrying a hundred 
innocent souls and light hearts, and among 
them deadly crime and vengeance — the 
doomed man and his executioner. His very 
heart shuddered in his breast as he made a 
faltering effort to explain himself, and get 
free from the crowd which thought him mad. 
That sight quenched the curses on his own 
lips, paled the fire in his heart. To see her 
dogging his steps, with her dreadful relent- 
less promise in her eyes, overwhelmed Vin- 
cent, v/ho a moment before had thrilled with 
all the rage of a man upon whom this villain 
had brought the direst shame and calamity. 
He could have dashed him under those 
wheels, plunged him into any mad destruc- 
tion, in the first passionate whirl of his 
thoughts on seeing him again ; but to see 
Her behind following after — pale with her 
horrible composure, a conscious Death track- 
ing his very steps — drove Vincent back with 
a sudden paralyzing touch. He stood chilled 
and horror-stricken in the crowd which 
watched and wondered at him : he drew 
himself feebly out of their detaining circle, 
and went and sat down in the nearest seat 
he could find, like a man W'ho had been 
stunned by some unexpected blow. He was 
not impatient when he heard how long he 
must wait before he could follow them. It 
was a relief to wait, to recover his breath, to 
realize his own position once more. That 
dreadful sight, diabolical and out of naturCj 
had driven the very life-blood out of his 
heart. 

As he sat, flung upon his bench in utter 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


204 

exhaustion and feebleness, stunned and 
stupefied, leaning his aching head in his 
hands, and with many curious glances thrown 
at him by the bystanders, some of wdiom 
were not sure that he ought to be suffered 
to go at large, Vincent became sensible that 
some one was plucking at his sleeve, and 
sobbing his name. It was some time before 
he became aware that those weeping accents 
w’ere addressed to him j some time longer 
before he began to think he. had heard the 
voice before, and was so far moved as to 
look up. When he did raise his head it was 
with a violent start that he saw a little rustic 
figure, energetically, but v/ith tears, appeal- 
ing to him, whom his bewildered faculties 
slowly made out to be Mary, his mother’s 
maid, whom Susan had taken with her when 
she left Lonsdale. As soon as he recognized 
her he sprang up, restored to himself with 
the first gleam of real hope which had yet 
visited him. “ My sister is here ! ” he cried, 
almost with joy. Mary made no answer but 
by a despairing outbreak of tears. 

“ Oh no, Mr. Arthur ; no — oh no, no ! 
never no more ! ” cried poor Mary, when 
she found her voice. “ It’s all been deceit- 
fulness and lyin’ and falsehood, and it aint 
none o’ her doing— oh no, no, Mr. Arthur, 
no ! — but now she’s got nobody to stand by 
her, for he took and brought me up this 
very day ; oh, don’t lose no time ! — he took 
and brought me up, pretending it w'as to 
show me the way, and he’s sent me right off. 


Mr. Arthur, and she don’t know no more 
nor a baby, and he’ll take her off over the 
seas this very night — he will ; for I had it 
of his own man. She’s written letters to 
her ma, Mr. Arthur, but I don’t think as 
they were ever took to the post ; and he 
makes believe they’re a-going to be married, 
and he’ll have her off to France to-night. 
O Mr. Arthur, Mr. Arthur, don’t lose no 
time ! They’re at a ’otel. Look you here 
— here’s the name as I wTote down on a bit 
o’ paper to make sure ; and O Mr. Arthur, | 
mind what I say, and don’t lose no time ! ” 

“But Susan — Susan — what of her?” 
cried her brother, unconsciously clutching 
at the girl’s arm. 

Mary burst into another flood of tears. 
She hid her face, and cried with storms of 
suppressed sobs. The young man rose up 
pale and stern from his seat, without asking 
another question. He took the crumpled 
paper out of her hand, put some money into 
it, and in few words directed her to go to 
his mother at Carlingford. What though 


the sight of her would break his mother’ 


heart — what did it matter ? Hearts were 
made to be broken, trodden on, killed, — so 
be it! Pale and fierce, with eyes burning ■' 
red in his throbbing head, he too went on, 
a second murder, after the fii’st which had 
preceded him in the shape of the Carling- [j 
ford needlewoman. The criminal who *! 
escaped two such avengers must bear a 
charmed life. 



SALEM CHAPEL. 


205 


PART VII.— -CHAPTER XXI. 

Mrs. Vincent rose from the uneasy bed, 
where she had not slept, upon that dreadful 
Sunday morning, with feelings which it 
would be vain to attempt any description of. 
Snatches of momentary sleep more dreadful 
than wakefulness had fallen upon her during 
the awful night — moments of unconscious- 
ness which plunged her into a deeper horror 
still, and from which she started thinking 
she heard Susan call. Had Susan called, 
had Susan come, in any dreadful plight of 
misery, her mother thought she could have 
borne it ; but she could not, yet did, bear 
this, with the mingled passion and patience 
I of a woman ; one moment rising up against 
j the intolerable, the next sitting down dumb 
I and steadfast before that terrible necessity 
: which could not be resisted. She got up in 
! the dim wintry morning with all that rest- 
i less anguish in her heart, and took out her 
I best black silk dress, and a clean cap to go 
! under her bonnet. She offered a sacrifice 
! and burnt-oflfering as she dressed herself in 
her snow-white cuffs, and composed her 
' trim little figure into its Sunday neatness ; 

! for the minister’s mother must go to chapel 
this dreadful day. No whisper of the tor- 
ture she was enduring must breathe among 
' the flock — nothing could excuse her from 
1 attending Salem, seeing her son’s people, 

I and hearing Mr. Beecher preach, and hold- 
ing up Arthur’s standard at this dangerous 
crisis of the battle. She knew she was pale 
when she came into the sitting-room, but 
comforted herself with thinking that nobody 
in Salem knew that by nature she had a 
little tender winter bloom upon her face, 
and was not usually so downcast and heavy- 
eyed. Instinctively she rearranged the 
breakfast table as she waited for the young 
minister from Homerton, who was not an 
early riser. Mr. Beecher thought it rather 
cheerful than otherwise when he came in 
somewhat late and hurried, and found her 
! waiting by the white covered table, with the 
i fire bright and the tea made. He was in 
! high spirits, as was natural. He thought 
Vincent was in very comfortable quarters 
and had uncommonly pleasant rooms. 

“ Don’t you think so ? and one has just 
as great a chance of being uncomfortable as 
not in one’s first charge,” said the young 
preacher ; “ but we were all delighted to 
hear that Vincent had made an ’it. Liberal- 


minded people, I should say, if I may judge 
by Mr. Tozer, who was uncommonly fi-iendly 
last night. These sort of people are the 
strength of our connection — not great peo- 
ple, you know, but the flower of the middle 
classes. I am surprised you did not bring 
Miss Vincent with you for a little cheerful 
society at this time of the year.” 

“ My daughter majk perhaps come yet, 
before — before I leave,” said Mrs. Vincent, 
draAving herself up, with a little hauteur as 
Mr. Beecher thought, though in reality it 
Avas only a physical expression of that sob 
of agony to Avhich she dared not give vent 
in audible sound. 

“ Oh, I thought it might be more cheerful 
for her in the winter,” said the preacher, a 
little affronted that his interest in Vincent’s 
pretty sister should be received so coldly. 
He Avas interrupted by the arrival of the 
post, for Carlingford Avas a profane country 
town, and had its letters on Sunday morn- 
ing. The Avidow set herself desperately 
doAvn in an arm-chair to read Arthur’s let- 
ter. It made her heart beat loud with 
throbs so violent that a blindness came over 
her eyes, and her very life failed for an 
instant. It was very short, very assured 
and certain — he was going to Northumber- 
land,— Avhere the fugitives had gone — he 
was going to bring Susan back. Mr. Beecher 
over his egg watched her reading this, and 
saAV that she grew ashy, deathly pale. It 
was not possible for him to keep silent, or 
to refrain from Avondering what it was. 

“ Dear me, I am afraid you are ill — can 
I get you anything ? ” he said, rising from 
the table. 

Mrs.Vincent folded up her letter. “ Thank 
you, my tea Avill refresh me,” she said, com- 
ing back to her seat. “I did not sleep 
very much last night, and my head aches ; 
when people come to my time of life,” said 
the little woman, with a faint heroical smile, 
“ they seldom sleep well the first few nights 
in a neAV place. I hope you rested comfort- 
ably, Mr. Beecher. Mr. Vincent, Arthur’s 
dear papa, used to say that he never preached 
well if he did not sleep well ; and I have 
heard other ministers say it was a very true 
rule.” , 

“ If that is all, I hope you will be pleased 
to-day,” said the preacher, Avith a little 
complaisance. “ I always sleep Avell ; noth- 
ing puts me much out in that respect. 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


206 

Perhaps it is about time to start now ? I 
like to have a few minutes in the vestry 
before going into the pulpit. You know the 
way perhaps ? or we can call at Mr. Tozer’s 
and get one of them to guide us.” 

“I think I know the way,” said Mrs. 
Vincent, faintly. It was a slight comfort, 
in the midst of her martyrdom, to leave the 
room and have a moment to herself. She 
sank down by her bedside in an inarticulate 
agony of prayer, which doubtless God deci- 
phered, though it never came to words, and 
rose up again to put on her bonnet, her neat 
shawl, her best pair of gloves. The smile 
that might have come on the face of a mar- 
tyr at the stake dawned upon the little 
woman’s lips as she caught sight of her own 
pale face in the glass, when she was tying 
her bonnet-strings. She was not thrusting 
her hand into the scorching flames, she was 
only pulling out the bows of black ribbon, 
and giving the last touch 'to that perfection 
of gentle neatness in which Arthur’s mother, 
for his sake, must present herself to his 
people. She took Mr. Beecher’s arm after- 
wards, and walked with him, through the 
wintry sunshine and streams of churchgoers, 
to Salem. Perhaps she was just a little 
sententious in her talk to the young preacher, 
who would have stared had anybody told 
him what active and feverish wretchedness 
was in her heart. She quoted Arthur’s 
dear father more than usual ; she felt a lit- 
tle irritated in spite of herself by the com- 
plaisance of the young man from ’Omerton. 
Notwithstanding the dreadful pressure of 
her trouble, she felt that his excitement in 
the prospect of preaching to Arthur’s people 
was quite ill-timed. What did it matter to 
him whether the Salem flock liked him or 
not? were they not Arthur’s people, pre- 
engaged to their own pastor ? The gentle 
widow did what she could to bring Mr. 
Beecher down as they walked through Grove 
Street. She remarked, gently, that where 
a minister was very popular, a stranger had 
but little chance of appreciation. ‘‘You 
must not be mortified if you see the congre- 
gation look disappointed when you come 
into the pulpit,” said Mrs. Vincent ; “ for 
my son, if he had not been called away so 
suddenly, was to commence a course of lec- 
tures to-day, and I believe a good deal of 
expectation was raised about them.” The 
new preacher was perhaps a shade less 


buoyant when he resigned his friend’s 
mother to Tozer at the door of the chapel, 
to be conducted to her pew. Salem was 
already about half filled ; and the entering 
flock looked at Mrs. Vincent, as she stood 
with the deacon in the porch, asking, 
with the courtesy of a royal personage, 
humble yet affable, after his wife and daugh- 
ter. Tozer was a little overawed by the 
politeness of the minister’s mother. He 
concluded that she was “ quite the lady ” in 
his private heart. 

“ If you tell me where the minister’s seat 
is, I need not trouble you to go in,” said 
Mrs. Vincent. 

“ Mrs. Tufton’s uncommon punctual, and 
it’s close upon her time,” said Tozer ; “ being 
a single man, we’ve not set apart a seat for 
the minister — not till he’s got some one as 
can sit in it ; it’s the old minister’s seat, as 
is the only one we’ve set aside ; for we’ve 
been a-letting of the pews uncommon this 
past month, and it don’t answer to waste 
nothing in a chapel as is as expensive to 
keep up as Salem. It’s our pride to give 
our minister a good salary, as you know, 
ma’am, and we’ve all got to pay up accord- 
ing ; so there ain’t no pew set apart for Mr. i 
Vincent — not till he’s got a wdfe.” ! 

“ Then I am to sit in Mrs. Tufton’s pew ? ” ' 
said the minister’s mother, not without a i 
little sharpness. j 

“ There ain’t no more of them never at i 
Salem but Mrs. Tufton,” said Tozer. “ Mr. , 
Tufton has had a shock, and the only one of j 
a family they’ve at home is a great invalid, i 
and never was within the chapel door in my i 
time. Mr. Tufton he do come now and 
again. He would have been here to-day, I ! 
make bold to say, but for the minister being , 
called away. I hope you’ve ’eard from Mr. I* 
Vincent, ma’am, and as he’ll soon be back. 

It ain’t a good thing for a congregation when J 
the pastor takes to going off sudden. Here 
she is a-coming. Mrs. Tufton, ma’am, this i 
is Mrs. Vincent, the minister’s mother ; she’s i 
been waiting for you to go into your pew.” 

“ I hope I shall not be in your way,” said 
Mrs. Vincent, with her dignified air. “ I 
have always been accustomed to see a seat 
for the minister ; but as I am a stranger, I j 
hope for once I shall not be in your way.” ii 

“ Don’t say a word,” cried Mrs. Tufton. • 
“ I am as glad as possible to see Mr. Vin- 
cent’s mother. He is a precious young man 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


207 


It’s not a right principle, you know, but it’s 
hard not to envy people that are so happy 
in their families ; nothing would make my 
Tom take to the ministry, though his papa 
and I had set our hearts upon it ; and he’s 
in Australia, poor dear fellow ; and my poor 
girl is such an invalid. I hope your daugh- 
ter is pretty well Come this way. I hope 
I shall see a great deal of you. Mr. Tufton 
takes such an interest in his young brother ; 
all that he wants is a little good advice — 
that is what the minister always tells me. 
All that Mr. Vincent wants, he says, is a 
little good advice.” 

The latter part of this was communicated 
in a whisper, as the two ladies seated them- 
selves in the^inister’s pew. After a mo- 
mentary pause of private devotion, Mrs. 
Tufton again took up the strain where she 
had left it off. 

“ I assure you, we take the greatest inter- 
est in him at the cottage. He doesn’t come 
to see us so often as Mr. Tufton would wish, 
but I dare say he has other things to do. 
The minister often says to me, that he is a 
precious young man, is Mr. Vincent, and 
that a little good advice and attention to 
those that know better, is all he wants to 
make him a shining light ; and I am sure 
he will want no good advice Mr. Tufton can 
give him. So you may keep your mind easy 
— YOU may keep your mind quite easy. In 
any difficulty that could occur, I am sure the 
minister would act as if he were his own 
son.” 

“ You are very kind ; but I hope no dif- 
ficulty will occur,” said Mrs. Vincent, with 
a little quiver in her lip. 

“I hope not, indeed; but there are so 
many people to please in a flock,” said the 
, late minister’s wife, with a sigh. “ We al- 
I ways got on very well, for Mr. Tufton is not 
one to take a deal of notice of any unpleas- 
f antness ; but you know as well as I do that 
! it takes a deal of attention to keep all mat- 
: ters straight. If you’ll excuse me, it’s a 
; great pity Mr. Vincent has gone away to- 
j day. Nothing would have made my husband 
I leave his post just as he was intimated to 
f begin a course of lectures. It’s very excusa- 
I *ble in Mr. Vincent, because he hasn’t that 
I experience that’s necessary. I always say 
1 he’s very excusable, being such a young 
I man ; and we have no doubt he’ll get on 
[ very well if he does but take advice.” 


“ My son was very unwilling to go ; but 
it was quite necessary. His sister,” said 
Mrs. Vincent, clasping her hands tight under 
her shawl to balance the pang in her heart, 
“was with some friends — whom we heard 
something unpleasant about— ^and he went 
to bring her home. I expect them — to-mor- 
row.” 

The poor mother shut her lips close when 
she had said the words, to keep in the cry 
or sob that seemed bursting from them. 
Yes, God help her, she expected them ; per- 
haps to-morrow — perhaps that same dread- 
ful night ; but even in the height of her 
anguish, there occurred to Mrs. Vincent a 
forlorn prayer that they might not come 
back that Sunday. Rather another agoniz- 
ing night than that all the “ chapel folks ” 
should be aware that their pastor was rush- 
ing wildly along distant railways on the day 
of rest. The fact that he was doing so 
added a pang to her own trouble. Total 
disarrangement, chaos, all the old habiti- 
tudes of life gone to wreck, and only des- 
peration and misery left, was the sensation 
produced by that interruption of all religious 
use and wont. It came upon her with an 
acute sting, to think that her poor young 
minister was travelling that Sunday ; just as 
in Arthur’s own experience at that same 
moment, the utter incoherency, chaos, and 
wretchedness into which his life had sud- 
denly fallen, breathed upon him in the sound 
of the church bells. 

“ Dear me, I am very sorry,” said Mrs. 
Tufton ; “ some fever or something, I sup- 
pose — something that’s catching? Dear, 
dear me, I am so sorry ! but there are some 
people that never take infection; a little 
camphor is such a nice thing to carry about, 
it can’t do any harm, you know. Mrs. 
Tozer tells me he is a very nice young man, 
Mr. Vincent’s friend from ’Omerton. I 
don’t like to say such a thing of a girl, but 
I do believe your son could have that Phoebe 
any day for asking, Mrs. Vincent. I can’t 
bear forward girls for my part — that is her 
just going into the pew with the pink bon- 
net ; oh, you know her !— to be sure Mrs. 
Pigeon remarked you were sure to go there ; 
though I should have hoped we would have 
seen you as soon as any one in Carlingford.” 

“ Indeed, I have been much disappointed 
not to call. I— I hope I shall— to-morrow,” 
I said the widow, to whom to-morrow loomed 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


208 

dark like another world, and who could not 
help repeating over and over the dreaded 
name. 

“ That is Maria Pigeon all in white — to 
be only tradespeople they do dress more 
than I approve of,” said Mrs. Tufton. “ My 
Adelaide, I am sure never went like that ; 
many people think Maria a deal nicer look- 
ing than Phoebe Tozer, but her mother is so 
particular — more than particular — what I 
call troublesome, you know. You can’t turn 
round without giving her offence. Dear me, 
how my tongue is going ! the minister would 
say I was just at my old imprudent tricks — but 
you, that were a minister’s wife, can under- 
stand. She is such a difficult woman to deal 
with. I am sure Mr. Tufton is always tell- 
ing them to w^ait, and that Mr. Vincent is a 
young man yet, and experience is all he 
wants. I wish he had a good wife to keep 
him straight; but I don’t know that that 
would be advisable either, because of Phoebe 
and the rest. Dear, dear, it is a difficult 
thing to know what to do ! — but Mr. Tufton 
always says. If he had a little more experi- 
ence Bless me, the young man is in the 

pulpit ! ” said Mrs. Tufton, coming to a sud- 
den standstill, growing very red, and pick- 
ing up her hymn-book. Very seldom had 
the good woman such a chance of talk. She 
ran herself so out of breath that, she could 
not join in that first hymn. 

But Mrs. Vincent, who had a sensation 
that the pew, and indeed the whole chapel, 
trembled with the trembling that was in her 
own frame, but who felt at the same time 
that everybody was looking at her, and that 
Arthur’s credit was involved, stood up stead- 
fastly, holding her book firm in both her 
hands, and with an effort almost too much for 
her, the heroism of a martyr, added her soft 
voice, touched with age, yet still melodious 
and true, to the song of praise. The words 
choked her as she uttered them, yet with a 
kind of desperate courage she kept on. 
Praise ! — it happened to be a very effusive 
hymn that day, an utterance of unmitigated 
thanksgiving ; fortunately she had not suf- 
ficient command of her mind or wits to see 
clearly what she was singing, or to enter 
into the wonderful bitter difference between 
the thanks she was uttering and the position 
in which she stood. Could she give God 
thanks for Susan’s ruin, or rejoice in the ! 
light he had given, when it reMealed only ' 


, misery ? She was not called upon to an- 
swer that hard question. She stood up me- 
chanically with her white face set in pale 
steadfastness, and was only aware that she 
was singing, keeping the tune, and making 
herself noways remarked among the crowd 
of strange people, many of whom turned 
curious eyes towards her. She stood with 
both her feet set firm on the floor, both her 
hands holding fast to the book, and over the 
ache of frightful suspense in her heart came 
the soft voice of her singing, which for once 
in. her life meant nothing except a forlorn 
determination to keep up and hold herself 
erect and vigilant, sentinel over Arthur’s 
fortunes and his people’s thoughts. 

Mr. Beecher’s sermon was undeniably 
clever ; the Salem folks pricked up their ears 
at the sound of it, recalling as it did that 
period of delightful excitation when they 
were hearing candidates, and felt themselves 
the dispensers of patronage. That was over 
now, and they were wedded to one ; but the 
bond of union between themselves and their 
pastor was far from being indissoluble, and 
they contemplated this new aspirant to their 
favor with feelings stimulated and piquant, 
as a not inconsolable husband, likely to be- 
come a widower, might contemplate the gen- 
eral female public, out of which candidates 
for the problematically vacant place might 
arise. Mrs. Pigeon, who was the leader of 
the opposition, and whose daughter Mr. 
Vincent had not distinguished, whose house 
he had not specially frequented, and whom, I 
most of all, he had passed in the street with- I 
out recognition, made a note of this man I 
from ’Omerton. If the painful necessity of | 
dismissing the present pastor should occur I 
— as such things did occur, deplorable though ! 
they were— it might be worth while sending || 
for Mr. Beecher. She made a note of him ! 
privately in her mind, as she sat listening \ 
with ostentatious attention, nodding her I 
head now and then by way of assent to his ■ 
statements. Mrs. Vincent remarked her 
as she watched the congregation from the I 
minister’s pew, with her jealous mother’s ‘i 
eyes. The Tozers were not so devoted in i 
their listening. Mrs. Tozer’s brilliant cherry- 
colored bonnet visibly drooped once or twice 
with a blessed irregularity of motion ; all 
these signs Mrs. Vincent perceived as she 
sat in preternatural acute consciousness of 
everything round her, by Mrs. Tufton’s side. 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


She was even aware that the sermon was 
clever ; she remembered expressions in it 
long after, which somehow got burned in, 
without any will of hers, upon her breaking 
heart. The subdued anguish that was in 
her collected fuel for its own silent consum- 
ing fire, even in the congregation of Salem, 
where, very upright, very watchful, afraid to 
relax her strained nerves even by leaning 
back or forward, she lived through the long 
service as if through a year of suffering. 

The congregation dispersed in a buzz of 
talk and curiosity. Everybody waited to 
know where the minister had gone, and 
w'hat had taken him away. “ I can’t say as 
I think he’s using of us well,” said somebody, 
whom Mrs. Vincent could hear as she made 
her way to the door. “ Business of his own ! 

I a minister aint got no right to have business 
i of his own, leastways on Sundays. Preach- 
ing’s his business. I don’t hold with that 
notion. He’s in our employ, and we pays 
him well ” 

Here a whisper from some charitable by- 
stander directed the speaker’s eyes to Mrs. 
Vincent, who was close behind. 

“ Well ! it aint nothing to me who hears 
me,” said this rebellious member, not with- 
out a certain vulgar pleasure in his power 
! of insult. “ We pays him well, as I say ; I 
i have to stick to my business well or ill, and 
; I don’t see no reason why the minister should 
be different ; if he don’t mind us as pays him, 

I why, another will.” 

j “ Oh, I’ve been waiting to catch your eye,” 

[ said Mrs. Pigeon, darting forward at this 
! crisis to Mrs. Tufton ; wasn’t that a sweet 
! sermon ? that’s refreshing, that is ! I haven’t 
I listened to anything as roused me up like 
I that, no, not since dear Mr. Tufton came 
I first to Carlingford ; as for what we’ve been 
i hearing of late, I don’t say it’s not clever, 

' but, oh, it’s cold ! and for them as like good 
i gospel preaching and rousing up, I must con- 

1 fess as Mr. Vincent- ” 

“Hush! Mrs. Pigeon — Mrs. Vincent,” 
said Mrs. Tufton, hurriedly ; “ you two ladies 
should have been introduced at the first. 
Mr. Pigeon is one of our deacons and lead- 
ing men, Mrs. Vincent, and I don’t doubt 
you’ve often and often heard your son talking 
of him. We are always discussing Mr. Vin- 
cent, because he is our own pastor now, you 
know ; and a precious young man he is — and 
CIIRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


209 

all that he wants is a little experience, as Mr. 
Tufton always says.” 

“ Oh, I am sorry ! — I beg your pardon. 
I’m sure,” cried Mrs. Pigeon ; “ but I am 
one as always speaks my mind, and don’t go 
back of my word. Folks as sees a deal of 
the minister,” continued the poulterer’s wife, 
not without a glance at that cherry-colored 
bonnet which had nodded during the ser- 
mon, and to which poor Mrs. Vincent felt a 
certain gratitude, “may know different; 
but me as don’t have much chance, except in 
chapel, I will say, as I think he wants speak- 
ing to ; most folks do — specially young folks, 
when they’re making a start in the world. 
He’s too high, he is, for us plain Salem 
folks ; what we want is a man as preaches 
gospel sermons — real rousing-up discourses 
— and sits down pleasant to his tea, and 
makes hisself friendly. I never was one as 
thought a minister couldn’t do wrong. I 
always said as they were just like other men, 
liking grand dinners and grand folks, and 
the vanities of this world ; — not meaning no 
offence, Mrs. Vincent, neither to you nor the 
minister — but I must say as I think, he’s a 
deal too high,” 

“My son has had very good training,” 
said the widow, not without dignity. “ His 
dear father had many good friends who have 
taken an interest in him. He has always 
been accustomed to good society ; and I 
must say, at the same time,” added Mrs. 
Vincent, “ that I never knew Arthur to fail 
in courtesy to the poorer brethren. If he 
has done so, I am sure it has been uninten- 
tionally. It is quite against my principles 
and his dear father’s to show any respect to 
persons. If he has shown any neglect of 
Mrs. Pigeon’s family,” continued the mild 
diplomatist, “ it must have been because he 
thought them less, and not more, in need of 
him than the rest of the flock.” 

Mrs. Pigeon listened with open mouth, 
but total discomfiture ; whether this was a 
compliment or a reprimand was totally be- 
yond her power to make out. She cried, 
“ Oh, I’m sure 1 ” in a tone which was half 
defensive and half deprecating. Mrs. Pig- 
eon, however, intended nothing less than to 
terminate the conversation at this interest- 
ing point, and it was with utter dismay that 
she perceived Mrs. Vincent sweep past be- 
fi^re she had recovered herself— sweep past 
! 14 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


210 

— though that black silk gown was of very 
moderate dimensions, and the trim little 
figure was noways majestic. The minister’s 
mother made a courtesy to the astonished 
wife of the poulterer ; she said “ good-morn- 
ing ” with a gracious bow, and went upon 
her way before Mrs. Pigeon had recovered 
her breath. Perfect victory attended the 
gentle widow in this little passage of arms. 
Her assailant fell back, repeating in a sub- 
dued tone, “ Well, Pm sure!” Mrs. Pig- 
eon, like Tozer, granted that the minister’s 
mother was “ quite the lady,” henceforward, 
in her heart. 

And Mrs. Vincent passed on victorious; 
yes, victorious, and conscious of her victory, 
though giddy with secret anguish, and feel- 
ing as if every obstacle that hindered her 
return was a conscious cruelty. They could 
not have arrived this morning — it was im- 
possible ; yet she burned to get back to see 
whether impossibility might not be accom- 
plished for once, and Susan be there aw'ait- 
ing her. The first to detain her was Mrs. 
Tufton, who hurried, with added respect, 
after her, triumphing secretly in Mrs. Pig- 
eon’s defeat. 

“ I am so glad you gave her her answer,” 
said Mrs. Tufton ; “ bless me, how pleased 
Adelaide will be when I tell her ! I always 
said it would be well for a minister’s wife to 
have a spirit. Wont you come and take a 
bit of dinner wdth us, as Mr. Vincent is not 
at home ? Oh, I dare say somebody will 
ask Mr. Beecher. It does not do to pay 
too much attention to the young men that 
come to preach — though I think he was 
clever. You wmnt come?— a headache? — 
poor dear ! You’re worrying about your 
daughter, I am sure ; but I wouldn’t, if I 
were you. Young girls in health don’t take 
infection. She’ll come back all right, you’ll 
see. Well — good-by. Don’t come in the 
evening if you have a headache. I shouldn’t, 
if I were you. Good-by — and to-morrow, 
if all is well, we’ll look for you. Shiloh 
Cottage— just a little way past Salem — you 
can’t miss the way.” 

“Yes, thank you — to-morrow,” said Mrs. 
Vincent. If only anybody could have known 
what dreadful work it was keeping up that 
smile, holding upright as she did ! Then 
she went on a little way in peace, half crazed 
with the misery that consumed her, yet un- 
naturally vigilant and on the alert, always 


holding up Arthur’s standard at that critical 
hour when he had no representative but 
herself in his field of battle. But the poor 
mother was not long allowed this interval of 
peace. After a few minutes, the Tozers, 
w^ho were going the same way, came up to 
her and surrounded her like a bodyguard.' . 

“ I liked that sermon, ma’am,” said 
Tozer ; “ there was a deal that was practical 
in that sermon. If ever we should be in the 
way of hearing candidates again — and short- 
sighted creatures like us never knows what’s 
a-going to happen— I’d put down that young 
man’s name for an ’earing. There aint a 
word to be said again’ the minister’s sermons 
in the matter of talent. They’re full of 
mind, ma’am — they’re philosophical, that’s 
what they are ; and the pews we’ve let in 
Salem since he come proves it, let folks say 
what they will. But if there is a w^ant, it’s 
in the application. He don’t press it. home 
upon their consciences, not as some on us 
expected ; and Mr. Tufton being all in that 
line, as you may say, makes it show the 
more. If I was going to make a change 
again — not as I mean nothing of the kind, 
nor as the Salem folks has ever took it into 
their heads — I’d like to have a little o’ both 
ways, that’s what I’d like.” 

“ When you get a minister of independent 
mind, Mr. Tozer, if he gives you the best he 
has, he ought to be allowed to choose his 
own way,” said Mrs. Vincent. “ My dear 
husband always said so, and he had great 
experience. Mr. Vincent’s son, I know, will 
never want friends.” \ 

“ I am sure as long as the minister keeps 
to his duty, he’ll always find friends in Tozer 
and me,” said the deacon’s wife, striking in ; 

“ and though there may be folks in a finer 
way, there aint no such good friends a pas- 
tor can have as in his owm flock. As for 
hearing candidates and that, Tozer ought to 
know as none on us would hear of such a 
thing. I don’t see no reason w^hy Mr. Vin- 
cent shouldn’t settle down in Carlingford i, 
and make himself comfortable. We’re all 
his friends as long as he’s at his post.” f - 

“ O ma, I am sure he is at his post,” cried 
Phoebe ; “ he has gone aw'ay because he could 
not help it. I am quite sure,” continued the 
modest maiden, casting down her eyes, 

“ that he would 7iever have left but for a 
good reason ! Oh, I am confident he is fond 
of Carlingford now. He would not go away ' 


■ ".ff ^ N ,;r rr — — — 


SALEM CHAPEL. 211 

if he had not some duty — I am certain he f “ You can’t take us amiss,” said Mrs. 
would not ! ” 1 Tozer ; “ there’s always enough for an extra 

“If Phoebe is better informed than the I one, if it isn’t grand or any ceremony ; or if 
rest of us, it aint nobody’s business as I can j you’ll come to tea and go to church with us 


see,” said the father, with a short laugh. “ I 
alw'ays like the young folks to manage them 
matters among themselves ; but I take my 
own view, miss, for all that.” 

“ O pa, how can you talk so,” cried Phoebe, 
in virgin confusion, “to make Mrs. Vincent 
think ” 

“Indeed, nothing will make me think 
otherwise than I know,” said Mrs. Vincent, 
with a voice which extinguished Phoebe. 
“ I understand my son. He does not be- 
stow his confidence very easily ; and I am 
sure he is quite able to manage all the mat- 
ters he may have in hand,” added the widow, 
not without significance. Not all her anx- 
iety for Arthur, not all her personal wretch- 
edness, could unwoman the minister’s mother 
so much as to make her forgive or overlook 
Phoebe’s presumption. She could not have 
let this pretendant to her son’s afiections off 
without transfixing her with a passing ar- 
row^ Human endurance has its limits. 
Mrs. Vincent could bear anything for Ar- 
thur except thi^ pretence of a special interest 
in him. 

“ Oh, I am sure I never meant ” fal- 

tered Phoebe ; but she could get no further, 
and even her mother did not come to the 
rescue. 

“Them things had much best not be 
talked of,” said Mrs. Tozer, sharply. “ Mr. 
Beecher is coming in to have a bit of dinner. 
You mightn’t have things comfortable where 
you are, the minister being away, and you 
used to your own house. Wont you come 
in with us and eat a bit of dinner ? I never 
can swallo.w a morsel when I’m by myself. 
It’s lonesome for you in them rooms, and us 
so near. There aint no ceremony nor non- 
sense, but we’ll be pleased if you’ll come.” 

“ Thank you very much,” said Mrs. Vin- 
cent, who could not forget that the cherry- 
colored bonnet had nodded during Mr. 
Beecher’s sermon, “ but I slept badly last 
night. At my time of life a new bed often 
makes one sleepless, and I have a bad head- 
ache. I think I will go and lie down. 
Many thanks. It is very kind of you to ask 
me. I hope I shall see- you,”, said the 
widow, with a slight shiver, repeating her 
formula, “ to-morrow.” 


at night Phoebe can run over and see 
how you find yourself. Good-mornin’. I’m 
sorry you’ll not come in.” 

“ Oh, I wish you would let me go with 
you and nurse you,” said Phoebe, not with- 
out a glance in the other direction at the 
approaching form of the young man from 
’Omerton, “ I am so frightened you don’t 
like me ! — but I’ll come over before tea, and 
sit with you if your headache is not better. 
If I could only make you fancy I was Miss 
Vincent ! ” said Phoebe, with pink pleading 
looks. 

Mrs. Vincent turned away more smartly 
under the effect of that stimulant. She 
crossed George Street, towards her son’s 
rooms, a solitary little figure, in the*^ flood 
of winter sunshine — not dismal to look at, 
save for its black dress, trim, alert, upright 
still. And the heart within, which ached 
with positive throbs of pain, had roused up 
under that last provocation, and was sting- 
ing with indignation and anger, pure 
womanly, and not to be deadened by any 
anguish. Phoebe’s impertinence, as she 
called it to herself, took her out of her own 
far heavier trouble. To think of that pink 
creature having designs upon her boy, and 
taking upon herself little airs of conquest ! 
To encounter Phoebe’s wiles overwhelmed 
Arthur with shame and annoyance ; but 
they exasperated his mother. She went 
home with a steadier ring in her little light 
footstep. But the fumes of that temporary 
excitement had faded when the door opened 
upon her — the blank door, with the little 
maid open-mouthed behind, who did not 
look her in the face, and who had nothing 
to communicate : the sitting-room up-stairs 
lay blank in utter solitude — all the books 
put away according to Sunday custom, and 
the cover of Arthur’s* letter lying on the 
table startling his mother into wild hopes 
that some other communication had come 
for her. She sank down upon a chair, and 
covered her pale face with her hands — tor- 
ture intolerable, unendurable ; but oh, how 
certainly to be endured and put up with ! 
This poor mother, who had met with many 
a heavy sorrow in her day, though never any 
so hideous as this, was no excitable, pas- 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


212 

sionate creature, but a wholesome, daylight 
woman, in whom no strain of superlative 
emotions had choked up the natural chan- 
nels of relief. She wept a few bitter, heavy 
tears under cover of her clasped hands — 
tears which took away the dreadful pressure 
upon her brain, and made it easier to bear 
for the moment. Then she went away in 
her patience, and took off her bonnet, and 
prepared herself for the calm of the dread- 
ful day of which so small a portion had yet 
passed. She pretended to dine, that no out- 
let might be left to gossip on that score. 
She took a good book and lay down upon 
the sofa in the awful silence — the moments 
creeping, stealing over her in a tedious pro- 
cession which she could almost see — the 
silence throbbing all around as if with the 
beats of her own heart j how was it that the 
walls of the house stood steady with those 
throbs palpitating within their dull enclos- 
ure ? But there was this comfort at least, 
that nobody fathomed Mrs. Vincent in that 
speechless martyrdom of hers — nobody 
guessed the horror in her heart — nobody 
imagined that there was anything of tragic 
meaning under that composed aspect. She 
went to church again in the evening to escape 
Phoebe’s “ nursing,” and sat there choking 
with the anticipation that meantime her son 
was bringing Susan home. ,She walked 
home with Beecher, devoured by feverish 
hopes and fears, found still no one there, 
with an unutterable pang, yet relief, and 
sat with the young man from ’Omerton for a 
horrible hour or. tw'o, till the strain had ail 
but killed her. But nobody came ; nobody 
came all through the hideous night. Hold- 
ing with half-frantic hands to the thread of 
life, which could ill bear this total want of 
all its usual sustenance, but which must 
not be sacrificed for her children’s sake — 
keeping alive, she could not tell how, with- 
out food, without rest, without even prayer 
— nothing but a form of dumb entreaty com- 
ing to her mind when she sought some for- 
lorn comfort from the mere fact of going on 
her knees — Mrs. Vincent lived through the 
night and the morning. Another horrible, 
sunshiny, cheerful day ; but no sound in 
earth or heaven to say they were coming — 
no arrival, no letter — nothing but hopeless, 
sickening, intolerable suspense — suspense 
all the more intolerable because it had to 
be borne. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

To-morrow! to-morrow was Monday 
morning, a new day, a new work-week — 
cheerful, healthful, and exhilarating — bright 
wnth that frosty sunshine, which carried 
comparative comfort to many a poor house in 
Carlingford. The widow’s face was sharper, 
paler, of a -wonderful ashy color. Nature 
could not go on under such a struggle with- 
out showing signs of it. Beecher, who was 
not to go until a late train, took leave of her 
as soon as he could, not without a little 
fright, and betook himself to Tozer’s, where 
he said she overawed him with her grand 
manners, and where he was led to admit 
that Vincent had always been a little “ high.” 

If she could have abandoned herself to her 
dreadful vigil, perhaps Mrs. Vincent might 
have found it easier, perhaps harder — she 
herself thought the former ; but she dared | 
not give up to it. She had to set her face | 
like a flint — she was Arthur’s representative, I 
and had still to show a steadfast front of | 
battle for him, and if not discomfit, still 
confront his enemies. She had to call at 
Shiloh Cottage, at Mrs. Tozer’s, to do what 
else might be necessary for the propitiation 
of the flock. She never dreamed of saying 
to herself that she could not do it ; there | 
was no question of that ; the flag had to be ' 
kept flying for Arthur. No friend of his 
must be jeopardized, no whisper allowed to 
rise which his mother could prevent; she 
had been a minister’s wife for thirty years ; •! 
well had she learnt in that time, like Mrs. 
Tufton, that a deal of attention was needed j 
to keep all things straight. j 

Accordingly, in the height of her excite- j 
ment and anxiety, believing that any mo- j 
ment the poor fugitive might be brought i 
home, the widow, in her unflinching martyr- ! 

dom, once more put on her bonnet, and drew 
out her black ribbon into bows of matchless | 
neatness. Though she wrung her poor hands 
in speechless anguish as she went out of the 
room, it was with composed, though color- 
less lips, that she spoke to the little maid in 
the hall.* “ Mr. Vincent may come home any 
time to-day,” said the widow ; “ you must 
have some lunch ready, and tea ; perhaps 
his sister may be with him — or — or she may 
come alone. Any one who comes is to be 
taken up-stairs. • I will not be long gone : 
and I am going to Mrs. Tufton’s, if anybody 
should want me ” 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


At this moment a knock came to the door 
— a hurried single knock, always alarming, 
and sounding like an evil omen. Mrs. Vin- 
cent’s voice failed her at that sound — most 
likely her face went into convulsive twitches 
— for the maid stood staring at her, too 
much startled to open the door, until a wild 
gesture from the speechless woman, who 
was herself unable to move, her breath 
almost forsaking her, and coming in sobs, 
recalled the girl to her senses. The door 
was opened, and Mrs. Vincent stood with 
bdrning eyes gazing out. Ah ! not Susan ! 
never Susan ! a little, stout, rustic figure, 
all weary and dishevelled, looking ashamed, 
frightened, almost disreputable in utter for- 
lornness and unhappiness. Mrs. Vincent 
gave a great sob to get breath, and dropped 
upon the chair, and held out her hand to 
Mary. She had forgotten Mary — forgotten 
her momentary comfort in the fact that 
Susan’s flight was not alone. Now was it 
life or death the girl was bringing? She 
drew the frightened creature near, close, and 
shrieked, as she thought, her question in her 
ear. “,What ? what P said Mrs. Vincent 
in her own mind; but no sound came to 
Mary’s ears. 

“ O missis dear, missis dear ! ” sobbed the 
girl. “ I’ve been and told Mr. Arthur exact 
where she is— he’s gone to fetch her home. 
O missis, don’t take on ! they’ll soon be here. 
Miss Susan’s living, she aint dead. O mis- 
sis, missis, she aint dead— it might be worse 
nor it is.” 

At these words Mrs. Vincent roused her- 
self up once more. “ My daughter has been 
ill,” she said in gasps, turning a dreadful 
look upon the servant of the house. Then 
she rose, took hold of Mary’s arm, and went 
up-stairs with her, holding her fast. She 
shut the door with her own hands when they 
got back to the lonely parlor full of daylight 
and silence. “Miss Susan has been ill?” 
she said once more with parched lips, look- 
ing again, with that full blank gaze which 
seemed to deny and defy any other answer, 
in Mary’s frightened face. 

“O missis, don’t take on!” sobbed the 
terrified girl. 

“No, oh no, no, that is impossible. I 
can’t take on, Mary, if I w'ould — oh no, not 
now,” said the poor widow, with what seemed 
a momentary wandering of her strained 


213 

senses. “ Tell me all — I am ready to heai 
it all.” 

And then Mary began the pitiful story, 
the same they had heard in lionsdale — the 
sudden arrival of the girl and her governess, 
and innocent Susan’s puzzled interest in 
them ; Mr. Fordham’s appearance after- 
wards, his sudden snatch at the stranger, 
his ready use of Artliur’s letter, which Su- 
san was disturbed about, to persuade her 
that she must instantly go to her mother 
and set all right; the journey which, when 
they arrived late at night in the unknown 
place, with the boom of the unexpected sea 
ill their ears, the defenceless deceived crea- 
tures found out not to be Carlingford. Mary 
knew nothing of the scene which had been 
enacted between them, when the villanous 
scheme was made known to the unh’appy 
victim. She could tell nothing but by 
guesses of what had passed and followed, 
and Mary, of course, by a natural certainty, 
guessed the worst. But next day Susan had 
written to her mother, either because she 
was still deceived or still innocent ; and the 
next day again Mary was sent away under a 
pretence of being sent to church, and the 
false Fordham himself had conducted her to 
town and left her there. Such -was Mary’s 
tale. Last night she had met Mr. Arthur 
and given him the address. Now, no doubt, 
they were on their w'ay, — if only missis would 
not take on ! 

“No,” said the widow once more, with 
speechless lips. Take on! oh no, never 
more. Surely, all these light afflictions that 
could bring tears were over now-r-nothing 
but horror and agony remained. The poor 
mother sat for a little in a dreadful silence, 
aching all over her anguished frame. Noth- 
ing was to be said or done ; the pause of 
utter misery, in which thought itself had no 
place, but one horrible sensation of suffering 
was all that remained of life, passed over 
her ; then a faint agonized smile fluttered 
upon her white lips. She drew on her glove 
again slowly and with pain. “I must go 
out, Mary,” said Arthur’s mother. “ I must 
do ray duty if the world were all breaking 
up, as I— I think it is ; and you must stay 
here and tell ray poor darling her mother 
will come back to her directly. And don’t 
talk to the other servant, Mary. You shall 
! be like my own child if you will stand by us 
I now.” 


214 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


O missis dear, not a word — not if it was 
to save my life! ” said poor Mary, through 
her tears. 

And in her bravery and desperation the 
widow went out to her other forlorn hope. 
She went away out of the doors which en- 
closed at least the knowledge of this event, 
through the every-day streets, where, if 
there were other tragedies, nobody knew 
of them any more than of hers. She had 
her veil over her face, on which that shadow 
had settled, and no one could have suspected 
her of carrying a broken heart through those 
sunshiny ways. She could not think or 
anticipate or even fear anything further. 
Susan might die under that load of shame 
and anguish, but her mother apprehended, 
was sensible of, nothing more. The worst 
had come, except for Arthur, who might be 
helped out of his troubles. So, stunned 
and hopeless, she set out to visit Arthur’s 
people, with a courage more desperate than 
that of battle. That was the duty which 
must be done if the world went to pieces — 
to talk to Adelaide Tufton and hear her 
sharp criticism and bitter gossip — to listen 
to the old minister dawdling forth his slow 
sentiments — to visit the Tozers and soothe 
their feelings, and hear what they had to 
say. An auto-da-fe in the old S])anish fash- 
ion would have been easier, to be sure ; but 
this was how the minister’s mother, in the 
depths of unknown anguish and calamity, 
was expected to exert herself, the only way 
she could serve her son. 

The parlor in Shiloh Cottage was as green 
and obscure, as warm and close, as of old. 
TJie big geranium had grown, and covered 
the little window still more completely, and 
the fire burned with virulence, conscious of 
the frost. The minister’s invalid daughter, 
with the colorless face and sharp eyes, was 
still knitting, leaning back upon her pillows. 
Poor Mrs. Vincent, when she sat down, as 
near the door as possible, feeling as if she 
could not get breath, became immediately 
aware that to confront those eyes was a more 
dangerous process than any which she had 
yet been subjected to in Carlingford. They 
penetrated through her, keen with the rest- 
less fife and curiosity, which made up to that 
disabled woman for the privations of her 
existence. In the dim green parlor the 
minister’s mother saw nothing but Adelaide 


Tufton’s eyes. If they had been beautiful 
eyes the effect would have been less surpris- 
ing ; but they were not beautiful ; they were 
pale blue, and had something of the shrill 
shining of a rainy sky in the glistening white, 
which counted for far more than the faint 
watery color. Mrs. Vincent gave way be- 
fore them as she had never yet done. She 
cast down her own eyes, and drew back her 
chair, and even faltered in her speech, when 
she was obliged to face their observation. 
The danger was all the greater for being 
unexpected. As for Mrs. Tufton, that good 
woman was in a flutter of interest and sym- 
pathy. She wanted to know whether Susan 
had gone through all the orthodox number 
of fevers and youthful ailments, and was in 
her element talking of the merits of camphor 
as a preventive, and of all the means that 
might be used to avoid infection. 

“ When my children were young and 
their papa always being noted for so active 
a man among his people, I don’t know what 
I should have done if I had been easily 
frightened” said Mrs. Tufton. “Don’t 
worry — keep her quiet, and give her ” 

“ Mrs. Vincent never said she was afraid 
of infection,” said Adelaide. “ Is it typhus 
fever? My mother jumps at everything, 
and never stops to inquire. I dare say it’s 
something quite different. Love affairs? 
Oh no ; of course we don’t want you to tell 
us. I don’t think Phoebe Tozer will die of 
her failure. This young man from Homer- 
ton will console her. Has your son recov- 
ered his little affair with the young Dowager, 
Mrs. Vincent ? He dined there, you know. 
I dare say his head was turned ; but there 
is one safeguard with those fine ladies. If a 
man has his W'its about him, he can always 
know that they mean nothing all the time.” 

“ Indeed, I don’t know what you mean. 
My son knows Lady Western, I believe ; I 
remember one time he dined there. My 
xVrthur,” said the mother, with a faint smile, 
“ is not one to have his head turned. He 
has been used to be thought a great deal of 
at home.” 

“ Ah, he’s a precious young man ! ” said 
Mr. Tufton, see-sawing the air with his 
large gray hand. “ I am much interested 
in my dear young brother. He thinks too 
much, perhaps— too much— of pleasing the 
carnal mind; and my people, that have 


SALEM CHAPEL. 215 


oeen used to practical preaching so long, 
find the difference. But when he has deeper 
experience ” 

“Stuff!” said the invalid, turning her 
head half aside ; “ you know the chapel has 
filled since he came. Even when they are 
asses like your Salem people, you know they 
like a man with brains. I don’t see that it 
matters much what Mr. Vincent goes wrong 
in ; ho was sure to go wrong somehow. I 
gave him six months, but he has got through 
the six months, and they have not killed 
him off yet. What does he mean, thrusting 
himself into other people’s messes? As far 
as I can make out, it’s quite a little tragedy. 
There was that Mrs. Hilyard, you know — 
i the woman in Back Grove Street. Ah, you 
know her ! ” said Adelaide, keenly, seeing 
the little shiver with which the visitor re- 
I ceived the name. 

“ I have heard my son speak of her,” said 
i the widow, faintly. 

' “ She was some connection of the Bedford 

; family,” said Adelaide, going on, with her 
; curious eyes fixed on Mrs. Vincent’s face, 
who quailed before her, “ and she married a 
half-brother of Lady Western — a desper- 
ate rascal he was. They had one bab}'^, and 
then she left him — one baby, a girl, that has 
! grown up an idiot ; and here this lady lives 
— a poor needlewouaan — to keep the girl 
! safe, somehow, out of her father’s hand. 

' Why he should want to have her I can’t cx- 
; actly tell. I suspect, because she’s pretty, 

; to make a decoy of her, and sell her some- 
i how, either to be married, or v/orsc — ” 

“ Adelaide ! ” cried Mrs. Tufton; “ O my 
I dear, do mind what you’re saying; Mrs. 

: Vincent does not know you. What can she 
I think if you talk like that ? ” 

“ Mrs. Vincent sees well enough I am not 
a girl to be frightened for words,” said the 
sick woman. “ Now, what I want to know 
' is, what has your son to do with it ? He’s 
gone off after them, now, for some reason or 
other ; of course I don’t expect you to tell 
me. Perhaps Lady Western has sent him ? 
— never mind, I will find out ; but I know 
it has something to do with Mrs. Hilyard, 
for they both went off from Carlingford the 
same day. I have no share in life for my- 
self,” said Adelaide, with another keen look 
at the stranger; “and so, instead of com- 
forting myself that it’s all for the best, as 
papa says, I interfere with my fellow-crea- 


tures. Oh, pray, don’t be sorry for me ! I 
get on as well as most people. Nobody in 
this place ever succeeds in concealing any- 
thing from me.” 

“Indeed, it is a pity when people have 
anything to conceal,” said poor Mrs. Vin- 
cent, thinking, witli a sensation of deadly 
sickness at her heart, of the awful secret 
which was in Mary’s keeping, and faltering, 
in spite of all her self-command. She rose 
up hurriedly, when she met once more the 
glance of those sharp eyes : she could not 
bear that investigation j all her dreadful 
suspense and excitement seemed to ooze out 
unawares, and betray themselves ; her only 
safety seemed in flight. 

“ This is a very short visit,” said Mr. 
Tufton. “ My dear anxious sister, we can 
only pray you may be comforted. All things 
work together for good ; you don’t need to 
be told that. It’s sure to be for the best, 
whatever happens : take that consolation to 
your heart — it’s sure to bo for the best.” 

“ If her daughter dies and her- son is dis- 
missed, I wonder will that be for the best ? ” 
said Adelaide Tufton, as soon as the widow 
had left the room. Mrs. Vincent’s ears, 
made acute by suffering, caught enough of 
this valedictory address to realize, if that 
were possible, an additional pang. Kind 
Mrs. Tufton did not hear it, not being in 
any such state of feverish susceptibility. 
She, on the contrary, kissed the mother, 
whom she pitied with all her heart, and en- 
treated her not to worry. “ A young healthy 
girl does not fall ill for nothing. You’ll see 
things will turn out all right,” said the kind 
soul ; and Mrs. Vincent went upon her for- 
lorn way. 

At Mrs. Tozer’s the minister’s mother 
found a little committee assembled. Mrs. 
Brown was therefrom the Devonshire Dairy, 
and Mrs. Pigeon, whose gratification in be- 
ing able to hail Mrs. Vincent as an acquaint- 
ance, to the confusion of the dairywoman 
and amazement of Mrs. Tozer, almost re- 
stored the minister to that lady’s favor. 
They were in the drawing-room, where, in 
honor of the expected visitors, a fire had 
been lighted ; and as Mrs. Vincent ascended 
the dark staircase, she obtained a passing 
glimpse of Mr. Beecher seated at the table 
in the parlor studying “ The Railway Guide,” 
which Phoebe expounded to him, until they 
w'ere both sent for up-stairs. Altogether 


216 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


the conjunction did not look promising for 
Arthur’s interests. She went in thrilling 
with a touch of exasperation and defiance. 
Now was the time to make a final stand for 
Arthur. This -covert rebellion could be dep- 
recated no longer. 

“ I expect my son home to-day,” said the 
brave mother, gulping down all the pangs 
of her expectation. “ I think, now that I 
see for myself how much he is thought of in 
Carlingford, I ought to make an apology to 
the Salem people. It was I that induced 
him to go away, not thinking that one Sun- 
day would be such a great matter ; but in- 
deed it was very gratifying to me to see how 
disappointed everybody was. I hope Mr. 
Beecher will pardon me, for I am sure he 
preached us a very nice sermon, and we 
were all grateful for it; but, naturally on 
my dear boy’s account, to see how disap- 
pointed everybody was, was a great gratifi- 
cation to me.” 

“ Oh ! I did not mind,” said Mr. Beecher, 
with a little laugh of embarrassment ; but 
the young man was much taken aback, and 
stared with astonished looks before he an- 
swered, at this totally unexpected address^ 
Having thus floored one of her adversaries, 
and seeing the female foe more voluble and 
ready, quite prepared to answer her, Mrs. 
Vincent blandly proceeded. 

“ And this, you know, Mrs. Tozer, was all 
the more gratifying to me, because I was 
not quite sure that Arthur had done wisely 
in choosing Carlingford. His dear father 
had so many friends in our denomination, 
and people are so kind as to speak of my 
boy as such a rising young man. Before I 
knew Carlingford,” said the widow, looking 
round her with an air of gentle superiority, 
“ I used to regret my son had not accepted 
the invitation from Liverpool. Many peo- 
ple said to me that his talents would have 
had so much more room there ; but I am 
reconciled now,” she added, turning her mild 
eyes upon Mrs. Pigeon, who showed symp- 
toms of resistance. “ I may say I am quite 
satisfied now. He would have been better 
off, and had more opportunity of making 
himself a position in Liverpool, but what is 
that in comparison with the attachment of a 
flock ? ” 

“ Well, indeed, that’s just the thing, 
ma’am,” said Mrs. Brown, who imagined 
herself addressed ; “ we are fond of him. I 


always said he was an uncommon nice young 
man ; and if he was but to settle down ” 

“ That will come in time,” said the minis- 
ter’s mother, graciously ; “ and I am glad, 
for my part, that he has been away, for it 
shows me how his dear people feel towards 
him ; and though he would have been, of 
course, better ofl‘ in Liverpool, I would never 
consider that in comparison. They still 
want to have him, you know, and keepiwrit- 
ing me letters, and him, too, I don’t doubt ; 
but after what I have seen, I could never 
advise him to break the link that has been 
formed here. The connection between pas- 
tor and people is a sacred tie ; it should 
never be broken,” said Mrs. Vincent, with 
mild grandeur, “ for anything so poor as a 
money object ; but my dear boy is far above 
any such consideration as that.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Mrs. Pigeon, drawing a long 
breath of involuntary awe and admiration ; 
“ and I don’t doubt as the pastor would have 
been a deal better off in Liverpool,” she 
added, after a pause, quite overpowered by 
that master-stroke. 

“ It’s a deal bigger a place,” suggested 
Mrs. Tozer; “and grander folks, I don’t 
have a doubt,” she too added, after an in- 
terval. This new idea took away their 
breath. 

“ But, ah ! what is that to affection P ” said 
Arthur’s artful mother, “ when a minister 
has the love of his flock ! My dear Mrs. 
Pigeon, though a mother is naturally anx- 
ious for her son, nothing on earth would 
induce me to advise him to break such a tie 
as that ! ” 

“And indeed, ma’am, it’s as a Christian 
mother should act,” gasped the poulterer’s 
subdued wife. Mrs. Brown made a little 
movement of admiring assent, much im- 
pressed with the fine sentiment of the min- 
ister’s mother. Phoebe put her handkerchief 
to her eyes, and Mr. Beecher found it was 
time for his train. “ Tell Vincent I am very 
glad to have been of use to him. We v/ere 
all delighted in ’Omerton to hear of him 
making such an ’it,” said Mr. Beecher, 
friendly but discomfited. He made his 
leave-taking all round, before Mrs. Vincent, 
at the height of victory, rose and went her 
way. Then she, too, shook hands, and 
blandly parted with the astonished women. 
They remained behind, and laid their heads 
together, much subdued, over this totally 


SALEM CHAPEL. 217 


new light. She departed, gently victorious. 
This little demonstration had done her good. 
When she got out into the street, however, 
she fell down again into those depths of 
despair out of which she had risen so bravely 
for Arthur’s sake. She began to plan how 
she and Susan could go a-way— not to Lons- 
dale — never again to Lonsdale — but to some 
unknown place, and hide their shame-stricken 
heads. She w'as so w'eary and sick in her 
heart, it was almost a comfort to think of 
creeping into some corner, taking her poor 
darling into her arms, healing those dread- 
ful wounds of hers, hiding her from the sight 
of men. This was what they must do as 
soon as her dearest child came back — go to 
I Scotland, perhaps, or into the primitive 
south country, where nobody knew them, 
or but softly, who was this ? 

A new claim upon the overworked anxious 
soul. At the door of her son’s house stood 
a carriage — an open carriage — luxurious and 
handsome, with tw^o fine horses impatiently 
pawing the air, and a very fine footman at 
the door, talking to the little maid. Within 
the carriage, the same beautiful young woman 
whom Mrs. Vincent remembered to have 
seen weaving a lovely hand to Arthur. No 
doubt it was Lady Western. The beauty 
did not bewilder Mrs. Vincent as she had 
bewildered Mrs. Vincent’s son ; but, with a 
1^ thrill of mingled pride, admiration, and 
[ disapproval, she hastened forward at sight 
I of her. Could she be asking for Arthur ? 

I and would Arthur have ventured to love 
j that lovely creature in her radiance of wealth 
I and rank ? With a mother’s involuntary 
I self-delusion Mrs. Vincent looked at the 
[ beautiful vision as at Arthur’s possible bride, 
and was proud and displeased at the same 
moment ; proud, that anything so lovely 
and splendid was to fall to her son’s lot — 
disapproving, that Arthur’s chosen should 
offer a mark of favor even to Arthur, so 
much more decided than accorded with the 
widow’s old-fashioned notion of what became 
a woman. Mrs. Vincent did not think of 
the other figure by Lady Western’s side — a 
man of great height, very slight, and rapid 
in his movements, with a long brown beard, 
and thoughtful eyes — eyes which lightened 
up and became as keen as they were dreamy, 
w'henever occasion arose. Why should the 
widow look at him ? She had nothing to do 
with him. This once in their life they were 


to come into momentary contact — never 
more. 

“ Mr. Vincent aint at home — but oh, look 
year ! here’s his mother as can tell you bet- 
ter nor me,” cried the half-frightened maid 
at the door. 

“ His mother ? ” said the beautiful crea- 
ture in the carriage ; she had alighted in a 
moment, and was by Mrs. Vincent’s side — 
“ Oh, I am so glad to see Mr. Vincent’s 
mother I I am Lady Western — he has told 
you of me ? ” she said, taking tho widow’s 
handj “ take us in, please, and let us talk 
to you — we will not tease you — we have 
something important to say.” 

“ Important to us— not to Mrs. Vincent,” 
said the gentleman who followed her, a 
remarkable figure, in his loose light-colored 
morning dress ; and his eyes fell with a 
remorseful pity upon the widow, standing, 
drawn back and self-restrained, upon the 
ground of her conscious misery, not know- 
ing whether to hope that they brought her 
news, or to steel herself into a common- 
place aspect of civility. This man had a 
heart ; he looked from the brilliant creature 
jpefore him, all flushed and radiant with her 
own happiness, to the little woman by her 
side, in her pitiful widow’s dress, in her visi- 
ble paleness and desperation of self-control. 
It was he who had brought Lady Western 
here to put his own innocence beyond doubt, 
but the cruelty of that selfish impulse struck 
him now as he saw them stand together. 
“ Important to us — not to Mrs. Vincent,” 
he said again, taking off his hat to her with 
devout respect. 

“Ah, yes! to us,” said Lady Western, 
looking up to him with a momentary gleam 
of love and happiness. Then the pretty 
tender-hearted creature changed her look, 
and composed her countenance into sympa- 
thy. “ I am so sorry for you, dear Mrs. 
Vincent ! ” she said, with the saddest voice. 
At this the widow on her part started, and 
was recalled to herself. 

“I am a stranger in Carlingford,” said 
the mild little woman, drawing up her tiny 
figure. “ I do not know what has procured 
me this pleasure — but all my son’s friends 
are w^elcome to me. I will show you the 
way up-stairs,” she continued, going up be- 
fore them with the air of dignity which, after 
the hard battles and encounters and bitter 
wounds of this day, became the heroic little 


218 CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


figure. She sent Mary, who started up in 
dismay at her entrance, into another room, 
and gave Lady Western a chair, but herself 
continued standing, always the conservator 
of Arthur’s honor. If Arthur loved her, 
who was this man ? why did such glances 
pass betw^een them? Mrs. Vincent stood 
erect before Lady Western, and did not 
yield even to the winning looks for which 
poor Arthur would have given his life. 

“ O dear Mrs. Vincent, I am so sorry for 
you ! ” said Lady Western again ; “ I know 
it all, and it makes my heart bleed to think 
of it. I will be your friend and your daugh- 
ter’s friend as long as I live, if you w'ill let 
me. Oh, don’t shut your heart against me ! 
Mr. Vincent trusts me, and so must you ; 
and I am heart-broken to think all that you 
must have gone through ” 

“ Stop ! ” said Mrs. Vincent, with a gasp. 
“ I — I cannot tell — what you mean,” she 
articulated with difficulty, holding by the 
table to support herself, but looking with 
unflinching eyes in her new persecutor’s 
face. 

“ Oh, don’t shut your heart against me,” 
cried the young Dowager, with genuine 
tears in her lovely eyes. “ This gentle- 
man was with Mr. Vincent yesterday — he 
came up here this morning. Lie is — Mr. 
Fordham.” She broke pff abruptly with a 
terrified cry. But Mrs. Vincent had not 
died or fainted standing rigid there before 
her, as the soft creature thought. Her eyes 
had only taken that blank lustreless gaze, 
because the force of emotion beneath was 
too much for them, and inexpressible. 
Even in that extremity, it was in the wid- 
ow’s heart, wrung to desperation, to keep 
her standing-ground of assumed ignorance, 
and not to know what this sudden offer of 
sympathy could meani 

“ I do not know — the gentleman,” she 
said, slowly, trying to make the shadow of 
a courtesy to him. “ I am sorry to seem 
uncivil ; but I am tired and anxious. What 
— what did you want of me ? ” she asked, 
in a little outburst of uncontrollable petu- 
lance, which comforted Lady Western. It 
w'as a very natural question. Surely, in 
this forlorn room, where she had passed so 
many wretched hours, her privacy might 
have been sacred ; and she was jealous and 
angry at the sight of Fordham for Arthur’s 


sake. It was another touch in the univer- 
sal misery. She looked at Lady Western’s 
beauty with an angry heart. For these 
two, who ventured to come to her in their 
happiness, affronting her anguish, was Ar- 
thur’s heart to be broken too ? 

“ We wanted — our own ends,” said Ford- 
ham, coming forward. “ I was so cruel as 
to think of myself, and that you w'ould 
prove it was another who had assumed my 
name. Forgive me — it was I who brought 
Lady Western here ; and if either of us can 
serve you, or your daughter — or your 
son — ” added Fordham, turning red, and 
looking round at his beautiful compan- 
ion — 

Mrs. Vincent could bear it no longer. 
She made a hasty gesture of impatience, 
and pointed to the door. “I am not well 
enough, nor happy enough, to be civil,” 
cried Arthur’s mother ; “ we want nothing 
— nothing.” Her voice failed her in this 
unlooked-for exasperation. A few bitter 
tears came welling up hot to her eyes. It 
was very different from the stupor of agony 
— it was a blaze of short-lived passion, 
which almost relieved, by its sense of 
resentment and indignation, a heart worn 
out with other emotions. Fordham him- 
self, filled with compunction, led Lady 
Western to the door; but it was not in the 
kind, foolish heart of the young beauty to 
leave this poor woman in peace. She came 
back and seized Mrs. Vincent’s trembling 
hands in her own ; she begged to be 
allowed to stay to comfort her ; she would 
have kissed the widow, who drew back, and, 
half fainting with fatigue and excitement, 
still kept her erect position by the table. 
Finally, she went away in tears, no other 
means of showing her sympathy being prac- 
ticable. Mrs. Vincent dropped down on her 
knees beside the table as soon as she was 
alone, and leaned her aching, throbbing head 
upon it. Oh, dreadful lingering day, which 
was not yet half gone ! Unconsciously groans 
of suffering, low but repeated, came out of 
her heart. The sound brought Mary, with 
whom no concealment was possible, and who 
gave what attendance and what sympathy 
she might to her mistress’ grievous trouble. 
Perhaps the work of this dreadful day was 
less hard than the vigil to which the mother 
had now to nerve her heart. 


SALEM CHAPEL. 219 


CHAPTEU XXIII. 

Was it possible that she had slept? A 
moment ago and it was daylight — a red 
sunset afternoon : .now the pale half light, 
struggling witL the black darkness, filled 
the apartment. She was lying on the sofa 
where Mary had laid her, and by her side, 
upon a chair within her reach, was some tea 
untasted, which Mary must have brought 
after* she had fallen into that momentary 
slumber. The fire burned brightly, with 
occasional little outbreaks of flame. Such 
a silence seemed in the house — silence that 
crept and shuddered — and to think she 
should have slept ! 

The night had found covert in all the 
corners, so dark they were ; but one pale 
line of light came from the window, and 
the room had a little ruddy centre in the 
fire. Mrs. Vincent, in the poignant an- 
guish of her awakening, grew supersti- 
tious ; some other breath — some other 
presence — seemed in the room besides her 
own. She called “Mary,” but there was 
no answer. In her excited condition any- 
thing was possible — the bounds of the liv- 
ing world and the possible seemed gone 
forever. She might see anything — hear 
anything — in the calm of her desperation. 
She got up, and hastily lighted the candle 
which stood on the table. As she looked 
over the little light a great cry escaped her. 
What was it? rising darkly, rising slowly, 
out of the shadows in which it had been 
crouching, a huddled indistinct figure. Oh, 
God ! not Susan ! not her, child ! As it 
rose slowly facing her, the widow cried 
aloud once more, and put her hand over 
her eyes to shut out the dreadful vision. 
Ghastly w’hite, with fixed, dilated eyes — 
with a figure dilated and grandiose — like a 
statue stricken into marble, raised to grand- 
eur — could it be Susap who stood there, 
without a word, without a movement, only 
with a blank dark gaze at the horrified 
woman, who dared not meet those dreadful 
eyes ? When life rallied in Mrs. Vincent’s 
horror-stricken heart, she went to the ghastly 
ci’eature, and put w'arm arms round it, and 
called it Susan ! Susan ! Had it any con- 
sciousness at all, this dreadful ghost? had it 
come from another world ? The mother 
kissed it with lips that woke no answer — 
held it motionless in her trembling arms. 
She cried again aloud — a great outcry — no 


longer fearing anything. What were ap- 
pearances now ? If it was Susan, it was 
Susan dead whom she held, all unyielding 
and terrible, in her warm human arms. 

Mary heard and came wdth exclamations 
of terror and sympathy. They got her be- 
tween them to the fire, and chafed her chill 
hands and feet. Nobody knew how she 
had got in, where she had come from ; no 
one w^as with her — no one had admitted 
her. She sat a marble woman in the chair 
where they had placed her, unresistant, 
only gazing, gazing — turning her awful 
eyes after her mother. At last she drew 
some long gasping breaths, and, with a 
shudder w^hich shook her entire frame, 
seemed to come to herself. “ I am Susan 
Vincent,” said the awful ghost. No tears, 
nor cries, nor wild pressure of her moth- 
er’s arms, nor entreaties poured into her 
cold ear, could extract any other words. 
Mrs. Vincent lost her self-possession : she 
rushed out of the room for remedies — rung 
the bell — called for Arthur in a voice of 
despair — could nobody help her, even in 
this horrible crisis? When she had roused 
the house she recollected herself, and shut 
the door upon the wondering strangers, 
and returned once more to her hopeless 
task. “ O Mary ! what are we to do ? O 
Susan, my child, my darling ! speak to your 
poor mother,” cried the widow ; but the 
marble figure in the chair, which was Susan, 
made no reply. It began to shiver with 
dreadful trembling fits — to be convulsed 
with long gasping sobs. “I am — Susan 
— Susan Vincent ” — it said at intervals, 
with a pitiful iteration. The sight of 
her daughter in this frightful condition, 
coming after all her fatigue and strain of 
excitement, unnerved Mrs. Vincent com- 
pletely. She had locked the door in her 
sudden dismay. She was kneeling, clasp- 
ing Susan’s knees — wasting vain adjurations 
upon her — driven beyond hope, beyond 
sense, beyond capacity. Little rustic Mary 
had all the weight of the emergency thrown 
upon her shoulders. It was she who called^ 
to the curious landlady outside to send for 
the doctor, and who managed to get Susan 
put into her mother’s bed. When they had 
succeeded in laying her dowm there, a long 
interval, that seemed like years, passed 
before Dr. Rider came. The bed was oppo- 
site the window, through which the pale 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


220 

rays of the twilight were still trembling. 
The candle on the other side showed Mrs. 
Vincent walking about the room wringing 
her hands, now and then coming to the 
bedside to look at the unconscious form 
there, rent by those gasping sobs, uttering 
those dreadful words. Mary stood crying at 
the foot of the bed. As for the widow, her 
eyes were tearless — her heart in an intoler- 
able fever of suffering. She could not bear 
it. She said aloud she could not bear it — 
she could not bear it ! Then she returned 
again to call vainly on her child, her child ! 
Her strength had given way — she had spent 
all her reserves, and had nothing to resist 
this unexpected climax of misery. 

It was quite dark when Dr. Rider came. 
Mary held the candle for him as he felt 
Susan’s pulse, and examined her wide-open 
eyes. The doctor knew nothing about her 
any more than if he had not been a doctor. 
He said it must have been some dreadful 
mental shock, with inquiring looks at Mrs. 
Vincent, who began to recover herself. He 
put back the heavy locks of golden brown 
hair, which had been loosened down from 
Susan’s head, and said he was afraid there 
was pressure on the brain. What could he 
say ? — he knew nothing more about it. He 
left some simple directions, said he Avould 
send some medicine, and took Mrs. Vincent 
into a corner to ask what it was. “ Some 
severe mental shock V ” asked Dr. Rider ; 
but, before she could reply, a cab drove 
rapidly up to the door, and sounds of a sud- 
den arrival were audible in the house. “ O 
doctor, thank God, my son is come — now I 
can bear it,” said the widow. Dr. Rider, 
who was of a compassionate nature, w’aited 
with pitying eyes till the minister should 
come up, and went to take another look at 
the patient, relieved to think he could speak 
to her brother, instead of racking her moth- 
er’s heart. Mrs. Vincent grew calm in the 
sudden consolation of thinking Arthur at 
hand. She sat down by the bedside, with 
her eyes fixed on the door, yearning for her 
son, the only living creature from whom she 
could have entire sympathy. Was it neces- 
sary that they should speak so loudly as 
they came up-stairs ? — could he be bringing 
a stranger with him to Susan’s sick room ? 
Her heart began to beat louder with mingled 
expectation and displeasure. It was not 
like Arthur — and there was no sound of his 


voice in the noise that swept up the stair. 
She rose up instinctively as the footsteps 
approached — heavy steps, not like her son’s. 
Then the door was thrown open. It w'as 
not Arthur w'ho stood upon the dim threshold. 
It was a stranger in a rough travelling coat, 
excited, resolute, full of his own errand. 
He made a stride into the room to the bed- 
side, thrusting Mrs. Vincent aside, not wit- 
tingly, but because she was in his W'ay. 
Mary stood at the other side with the doc- 
tor, holding up the one pale candle, which 
threw a flickering light upon the marble 
white figure on the bed, and the utter con- 
sternation and surprise in Dr. Rider’s face. 
Mrs. Vincent, too much alarmed and aston- 
ished to ofier any resistance, followed the 
man who had thus entered into her sanctu- 
ary of anguish. He knew what he was do- 
ing, though nobody else did. He w^ent 
straightforward to the bed, and stretched 
out his hand to lay it on Susan’s shoulder. 
“ You’re wanted, miss,” said the stranger. 
“ Come — I aint agoing to be hard on you — 
don’t make no row. Time enough to be sick 
where you’re going. I’ve come after you 
every step, and you aint clever enough to 
deceive me.” 

Mrs. Vincent rushed forward to him, and 
seized the fellow by the arm — “ Leave the 
room ! ” she cried with sudden passion — 
“ He has made some impudent mistake, 
doctor. God help me! — will you let my 
child be insulted? Leave the room, sir — 
leave the room, I say ! This is my daugh- 
ter, Miss Vincent, lying here. Mary, ring 
the bell — he must be turned out of the room. 
Doctor, doctor, you are a man; you will 
never let my child be insulted because her 
brother is away.” 

“ What does it mean ? ” cried Dr. Rider 
— “ go outside and I will come and speak to 
you. Miss Vincent is in a most dangerous 
state — perhaps dying. If you know her — ” 

“ Know her, doctor ! you are speaking of 
my child,” cried Mrs. Vincent, who faced 
the intruder with blazing eyes. The man 
held his ground, not impertinently, but with 
steadiness. 

“ I know her fast enough,” he said ; “ I’ve 
tracked her every step of the way ; not to 
hurt the lady’s feelings, I can’t help what 
I’m doing, sir. It’s murder ; — I can’t let her 
out o’ my sight.” 

Mrs. Vincent clasped her hands together 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


■with a grasp of desperation. “ What is 
murder ? ” she said, in a voice that echoed 
through the room. The doctor, with an ex- 
clamation of horror, repeated the same ques- 
tion. Murder ! it seemed to ring through 
the shuddering house. 

“ It’s hard upon a lady, not to say her 
mother,” said the man, compassionately ; 
“ but I have to do my duty. I have to ar- 
rest Susan Vincent for wilful murder. I 
came off afore the crowner had sat; but 
there wasn’t no doubt it would be brought 
in wilful. Don’t fret, ma’am,” he added, 
■with a glance of pity, “them young and 
pretty ones get off sometimes ; and, to be 
'sure, it aint proved again her yet; but I 
must do my duty. She come here in her 
senses, and it’s suspicious to be took so 
sudden. I daren’t let her out of my sight.” 

There was a dreadful pause. Mrs. Vin- 
cent looked up at the two men before her 
with a heart-rending appeal in her eyes. 
Would anybody tell her what it meant? — 
would nobody interfere for Susan ? She 
moaned aloud inarticulate in her voiceless 
misery. “ And Arthur is not herd ! ” was 
the outcry which at last burst from her 
heart. She -was beyond feeling what this 
w'as — her senses were confused with extrem- 
ity of suffering. She only felt that another 
blow had been dealt at her, and that Arthur 
was not here to help to bear it. Then the 
stranger, who had put himself so horribly in 
possession of Susan’s sick-room, once more 
began to speak. The widow could not tell 
what he said — the voice rang in her ears 
like a noise of unmeaning sound, but it 
stirred her to a flush of female passion, as 
violent as it was short-lived. She sprang 
forw^ard and took hold of his arm with her 
white, little, trembling hand : “ Not here — 
not here ! ” cried the mother in her passion. 
With her feeble force excited into something 
irresistible, she put the astonished stranger 
out of the room before he knew what she 
was doing. If an infant had done it the man 
could not have been more utterly astonished. 
Outside, the people of the house were stand- 
ing in an excited group. She thrust the 
dreadful messenger of justice out with those 
hands that shook with tremors of anguish 
and weakness. She shut the door upon him 
with all her feeble strength, locked it, put a 
chair against it; then she stumbled and fell 
as she stretched out for another — fell down 


221 

upon her knees, poor soul! and remained 
so, forgetting, as it seemed, how she came 
there, and gradually, by instinct, putting tc * 
gether the hands which trembled like leaves 
in the wind — “ Lord, Lord ! ” cried the 
mother, hovering on the wild verge between 
passion and insensibility. She called him 
by name only as utter anguish only knows 
how ; she had nothing to tell him ; she could 
only call upon him by his name. 

Dr. Rider took the half-insensible form 
up in his arms and carried her to the bed- 
side, where Susan still lay motionless with 
her eyes wide open, in an awful abstraction 
and unconsciousness. He put Mrs. Vincent 
tenderly into the chair, and held the hands 
that shook with that palsied irrestrainable 
tremor. “No one can bring her to life but 
you,” said the doctor, turning the face of the 
miserable mother towards her child. “ She 
has kept her senses till she reached you ; 
when she was here she no longer wanted 
them ; she has left her life in your hands.” 
He held those hands fast as he spoke ; 
pressed them gently, but firmly ; repeated 
his words over again. “In your hands,” 
said the doctor once more, struck to his 
heart with horror and pity. Susan’s bare 
beautiful arm lay on the coverlid, white, 
round, and full, like marble. The doctor, 
who had never seen the fair Saxon girl who 
was Mrs. Vincent’s daughter a week ago, 
thought in his heart that this full developed 
form and face, rapt to grandeur by the 
extremity of woe, gave no contradiction to 
the accusation he had just heard with so 
much horror. That week had obliterated 
Susan’s soft girlish innocence and the sim- 
plicity of her eighteen years. She was a 
grand form as she lay there upon that bed 
— might have loved to desperation — fallen 
— ^lulled. Unconsciously he uttered aloud 
the thought in his heart — “ Perhaps it would 
be better she should die ! ” 

Then the mother rose. Once more her 
painful senses came back to the woman who 
was still the minister’s mother, and, even in 
this hideous dream of misery, had not for- 
gotten the habits of her life. “ When my 
son comes he will settle it all,” said Mrs. 
Vincent. “ I expect him — any time — he 
may come any miqute. Some one has made 
— a mistake. I don’t know what that man 
said ; but he has made — a mistake, doctor. 
My son, Mr. Vincent, will see to all that. 
It has nothing to do with us. Tell me what 
we are to do for my child. Cut off her 
hair? Oh, yes, yes, anything! I don’t 
mind it, though it is a sacrifice. She has 
had — a — a great fright, doctor. She could 


222 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


not tell me particulars. When her brother 
comes home, we will hear all,” said the 
widow, looking with a jealous gaze in his 
eyes to see if he believed her. The scene 
altogether overcame Dr. Rider. He turned 
away and went to the other side of the room, 
and took a glass of water from the table 
before he could answer her or meet that 
appeal. Then he soothed her as he best 
could with directions about Susan. He 
went away immediately to come back in an 
hour, if perhaps there might be any change 
— so he said ; but, in reality, he wanted to 
escape, to hear this dreadful story, to think 
what was best. Friendless, with nobody 
near to protect them, and the officer of jus- 
tice waiting at the door, what were these 
women to do ? perhaps death waited closer 
than the visible messenger of fate. Would 
it be well to stay that more merciful execu- 
tioner on his way ? 

The doctor found the officer outside the 
door, waiting, not without pity, at his post. 
He heard what was this man’s version of 
the strange tragedy — strange, and yet not 
unfamiliar to human ears. The young 
woman had been betrayed and ruined. In 
wild vengeance and misery she had seized 
one of her seducer’s pistols and shot him 
through the head — such was the story. And 
now she had fled from the scene of the mur- 
der, tracked step by step by the avenger. 
The whole house was in a tumult, as may 
be supposed. The indignant landlady, who 
was a member of Salem, could scarcely be 
prevented going into the jealously closed 
room and turning out the unhappy criminal. 
Another lodger, a nervous woman, had al- 
ready collected her goods to fly from the 
place. Outside, a crowd was collected round 
the door. Murder ! the dreadful word passed 
from lip to lip. It thrilled half through Car- 
lingford before an hour was past. When 
the doctor had persuaded the hesitating 
policeman that his prisoner could not be 
removed, and he sent a message by the tele- 
graph that he had secured her, the messen- 
ger could scarcely pass through the palpitat- 
ing throng in front of that house hitherto so 
irreproachable. Its mistress sat sobbing in 
the hall, wringing her hands over the ruin 
of her occupation. Already Tozer had set 
out from his shop, red with anger, to put a | 
stop to such a rumor, or to disown all con- 
nection with this disgraceful relation of the 
minister. And still Arthur had not ap- 
peared to stand by the miserable women in 
this horrible climax of fate. * 

When the doctor went back to the room ' 
where Susan was, he found Mrs. Vincent in ' 
a state of agitated activity. Mary and she 
were flitting about the’ room moving lights 
before Susan’s eyes, making what noises they 


could with the furniture, keeping a fantastic 
commotion about the bed. “ She stirred, 
doctor, and we were trying to rouse her,” 
said the widow, who had put everything but 
Susan’s bodily extremity from her eyes at 
the moment. The doctor, who was desper- 
ate, and whose heart was moved, resorted 
to desperate measures. He*gathered them 
about the bed, set Mrs. Vincent to support 
the insensible form, and raising that white 
marble arm which had developed into such 
glorious proportion, touched the swollen blue 
vein with his lancet. The touch acted like 
magic. In another moment she had strug- 
gled up out of her mother’s grasp, and thrown 
out the arm from which the blood flowed, up 
above her head : the crimson stream caught 
her wild eye as she raised her arm in the air. 
A convulsive shudder shook her frame. She 
threw herself over on her face with a cry of 
horror, far more than a match, in her strength 
of youth and passion, for the agitated arms 
that held her. “ Mother, mother, mother ! it is 
his blood I it is his life ! ” cried that despair- 
ing voice. The confused bed, the convulsed 
frame, the flowing blood, all pitifully lighted 
up by Mary’s candle, made up of themselves 
a scene like murder ; and Dr. Rider vainly 
tried to forget the dreadful words which 
forced upon his mind their untimely testi- 
mony. He shuddered at the touch of that 
white woman’s hand as he bound up the 
wounded arm. He withdrew his eyes from 
the pallid grandeur of the stricken face. In 
spite of himself, horror mingled with his 
pity. A heavier stain was upon her than 
those crimson traces on her pearly skin. 
Other words followed in an incoherent stream. 
Fever of the heart and brain burning up into 
consuming frenzy had seized upon this lost 
creature, who was no longer a girl or inno- 
cent. Ere long they had to send not only 
for nurses, but men, to restrain her delirium. 
She, raving with a wild madness which be- 
trayed in every wandering exclamation the 
horror upon her soul, lay desperate in the 
room which had enclosed for so many linger- 
ing hours her mother’s anguish of suspense 
and fear. With only one thin wall between, 
her pursuer sat pricking his quick ears, sorry, 
yet watchful, noting down what words he 
caught, intent that his prisoner should not 
escape him. While, outside, the crowd col- 
lected in the quiet street, pointing up to the 
windows, asking each other if “ he ” or 
“ she ” were caught ; waiting with hopes of 
seeing the murderer brought out, and whis- 
pering among themselves different versions 
of the dreadful story. Such was the scene 
upon which Arthur Vincent, not unwarned, 
yet incredulous, came suddenly with eyes of 
horror and wild indignation as he reached 
his own door. 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


PART \Tn. — CHAPTER XXIV. 

When Vincent was set clown in the dark- 
ness and silence of the Sunday night in the 
Dover railway station, stunned as he was by 
all that he had heard and seen, and worn 
out with fatigue and want of rest, his facul- 
ties were not at his command, as they ought 
to have been at the command of a man in 
such desperate straits, and with such a mat- 
ter in his hands. When his fellow-passen- 
gers trooped aw'ay with all the bustle and 
excitement of travellers who had then only 
completed the first stage of their journey to 
the pier, and the night-boat which waited to 
carry them across the Channel, he, left be- 
hind, after being vainly stimulated by vari- 
ous porters and attendants with adjurations 
to make haste, and warnings that he would 
be too late, stumbled out at length into the 
unknown place — into the gloom of night — 
only half aware of the immediate occupa- 
tion that lay before him. The image of 
Susan grew hazy before her brother’s eyes. 
Mary’s revelation did not move him now 
with the quickening thrill of anguish and 
rage which had at first stirred him when he 
heard it. He had no longer his wits about 
him ; anxiety, fear, the impulse of revenge, 
were all obliterated by the utter weariness 
which dulled all his senses, and made the 
necessity of throwing down his wearied 
limbs in some corner, and somehow drop- 
ping to sleep, more imperative than any 
other need. He had not energy enough to 
ask where the hotel was to which Mary had 
directed him, but wandered along in the 
darkness with the sound of the sea booming 
in his ears — sounding all the more thundery 
and tempestuous because it was unseen. 
This heavy unaccustomed cadence aided the 
dull effect of weariness. His own thoughts 
left him altogether — he was scarcely con- 
scious of anything but the measured roll of 
the sea and the languor of his own worn-out 
frame, as he went on mechanically towards 
the lights before him. When he came into 
the brighter street, and began to encounter 
other wayfarers, his mind returned to him 
so far that he became dimly aware of what 
he had to do. The hotel of which Mary had 
told him was directly in his way, and the 
sight of it roused him still farther. He went 
in and asked first for Mr. Fordham, and 
then for Colonel Mildmay, without any suc- 
cess. Then he described the party — a tall 


223 

man with light thin hair and mustache, two 
ladies,, one with a blue veil. With a pang 
which penetrated through the cloud of fatigue 
which enveloped him, he did his best to de- 
scribe Susan as he had seen her last, and 
repeated with melancholy mechanical itera- 
tion the one circumstance he knew about 
the other companion of her flight — the blue 
v^il. This dreadful piece of female drapery 
seemed to float through the occurrences of 
the past week, visible through the feverish 
haze which obliterated all distinctions of 
day and night, and made a kind of dull 
eternity, broken by no divisions of time, of 
this terrible crisis in Vincent’s history. The 
description, however, gained him some in- 
formation, though not what he sought. The 
party had left the inn an hour or two before 
j — suddenly, as if upon some sudden news 
or unexpected necessity — where, nobody 
could tell. Vincent received the account of 
their departure dimly, scarcely able to fol- 
low its details ; but he understood that it 
i was most probable they must have gone 
! across the Channel, and had consciousness 
I enough left to rush as fast as his wearied 
limbs would carry him to the pier. Had he 
been in time enough, he would have leaped 
on board the boat without further question, 
and gone hopelessly far away from poor 
Susan and her terrible fate ; but the col- 
ored lamp on the mast of the steamer was 
just gliding out of the shelter of the harbor 
as he stumbled down through the darkness 
into the midst of the dispersing lookers-on. 
Nobody there could tell him anything about 
that blue veil ; there was no other boat till 
morning — and whether the party he pursued 
had gone in this one, he could get no infor- 
mation. It was very late, very dark and 
cold, and the ominous moan of the sea again 
bewildered all the confused powers he had 
left. He took his troubled way back again 
to the inn, possessed above everything with 
an overwhelming desire to throw himself 
down somewhere and rest. When he had 
got into a room there, he summoned once 
more the waiter who had first identified the 
fugitives. He wanted to hear over again, 
if perhaps he could understand a little more 
clearly this time the particulars of their de- 
parture. 

“ It’s my opinion they’ve not gone off 
yet,” said the man : “just afore you come 
in, sir, going the opposite way from the pier, 


SALEM CHAPEL 


224 

I see the man-servant passing by. It was 
he as took off the boxes ; but they hadn’t 
no boxes — what am I thinking of? that was 
the wonderfullest thing about them ; the 
bags and the wraps, and them things. I 
don’t believe they have gone off — not after 
seeing the man.” 

“ Then where do you think they are ? ” 
said Vincent, getting up wearily. He threw 
on again the coat he had just taken off with 
a sigh of fatigue and exhaustion : as long 
as anything could be done he must not 
rest ; but rest was the thing which of all 
others appeared at that moment most de- 
sirable in his eyes. 

“ That’s just what I can'’t say ; but if I 
was you, sir, I’d make some more inquiries 
afore going off in the boat,” said the man. 
“ I’d send and ask at the railway, and-^and 
at the livery stables, if they’ve hired any 
carriages — or anywhere else as could be 
thought upon. There’s an up train as is 
just off; shall I send to the station and 
make inquiries if they’ve been seen there ? ” 

“ Do,” said Vincent, dropping back again 
into his chair. He threw himself on the 
sofa when the waiter left him, and was so 
deep asleep when that functionary returned, 
that, stranger though he was, he had not 
the heart to "wake the worn-out young man. 
It was morning before the young minister 
awoke out of that profound slumber — woke 
chilled and aching and confused, in the 
dark, with the untouched meal, which he 
had ordered the previous night, still on the 
table, the candle flaring in its socket, and 
he himself totally unaware how long he had 
lain there. He stumbled up making an 
effort to recover himself, but only to find, 
when he looked at his watch by the expir- 
ing light of the candle, that it was still early 
morning — too early to do anything — and that 
he must have slept for hours. In the inter- 
val that elapsed before the first sounds of 
awakening life in the house, he had time to 
go over all the succession of events which 
had made this last week more important 
than many past years. Of all that had hap- 
pened, two particulars remained most deeply 
impressed upon Vincent’s mind — Mrs. Hil- 
yard’s face in that railway carriage looking 
out upon him, calm, deadly, conscious of its 
terrible purpose — and poor Mary’s burst of 
inconsolable w'eeping, expressive beyond all 

power of words, when he had asked her for 

( 


Susan. Such thoughts made the daylight 
hideous as it crept chill and slow upon the 
awakening house. Pale, grim, and ghastly 
was the face which the unhappy young man 
saw in the glass as he attempted a hasty 
toilette. No news of the fugitives had been 
heard at the railway. They had not left by 
the morning boat— so the waiter informed 
him when he went down-stairs ; the rest 
was in his own hands. 

But a man, accustomed only to the habits 
of an honorable and virtuous life, is sadly at 
a loss when he has to contend with the de- 
vices of guilt and cunning. Vincent went 
to inquire at the other hotels — went to the 
pier, the railway, the livery stables, as his 
friend the waiter suggested, without hearing 
anything of the party of which he was in 
search. He spent all the morning so, always 
baffled and growing hopeless. Another 
steamer sailed at midday, by which, if he 
obtained no information in the mean time, 
he had resolved to cross over to Calais, and 
try whether any clue w'ere to be obtained 
there. With this thought in his mindj he 
was making his way through a back street 
towards the hotel, where already the prompt 
curiosity and interest of the common mind 
in anything mysterious had made him almost 
a person of consequence. Pound one of the 
houses in the street a little crowd had con- 
gregated. As Vincent approached, a police- 
man darted forth from the throng, jumped 
into a passing cab, and drove off at a noisy 
pace, making more demonstration than 
speed. “ He’ll get her, sure enough,” said 
one of the bystanders, as Vincent came up. 

“ Murder will out. He’ll run her down 
afore she’s far from here. She aint got 
such a start, but that Jim will soon be on 
her heels ; and I shouldn’t wonder if there 
was a good reward. He’s a gentleman, 
though he’s a bad ’un — that’s clear.” ■ 

“ Yes,” said a woman ; “ it’s only them 
as calls themselves gentlefolks as ever do 
put a poor girl crazed o’ that way. Poor ■ 
soul! They say she aint no more than I 
twenty or so by her looks ; and if it wasn’t ^ 
murder, and law, and the crowner, and all 
that, oh, wouldn’t it be served him right, the 1 
villain, to drive a poor thing out o’ her ' 
senses, and ruin her, and bring her to shame ! i 
It’s him as Jim should ha’ been after, and j 
not her as is drove out o’ her wits, and don’t i 
know what’s she a-doing of; and I hope! 


^ CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 225 


she’ll get clear out o’ his hands, and get off, 
if she has killed the man. He’s done worse 
nor kill ^er.” 

“ What is it ? ” asked Vincent, with a 
warning thrill in his breast. 

“ O sir, it’s a poor thing as has been 
ruined and betrayed, and she’s been and 
took a pistol and shot him, and the police 
is after her. I see them come in last night. 
There come three in a cab, though this aint 
no place for gentlefolks. I said to my mas- 
ter, says I, they aint no good, folks like that 
a-coming to the Swan ; and look ye here, 
what’s come of it ? There was one on ’em 
was lovely — that one in the blue veil.” 

, “ Make way ! ” said Vincent, with a stifled 
cry. He pressed in through the crowd, 
conscious of nothing round him, putting 
aside with mechanical care the women and 
babies who clustered closest to the door. 
His visible excitement was irresistible, and 
could not be set aside. The policeman at 
the door suffered him to enter in the whirl- 
wind of passion which enveloped him. He 
sprang up the stairs in two or three steps, 
pressed to a half-open door, within which he 
saw some people assembled, and, unawares 
thrusting aside a man who stopped him, 
went into that chamber of death. Several 
people were round the bed — one a surgeon, 
occupied W'ith the prostrate figure there. 

• Vincent, over the heads of the spectators, 
gazed with burning eyes at that horrible spec- 
tacle. No thought of Susan was in his mind, 
as with haggard face and horror-stricken 
soul he gazed at the shattered head bound 
up in bloody bandages, scarce recognizable, 
except by sharp eyes of love or hate, which 
lay on that mean pillow. “ She has kept her 
word,” he said to himself, with a groan of 
horror. He did -not observe the start and 
rustle round him, which proved that he had 
spoken aloud. He was far too deeply ab- 
sorbed to think of himself, or to remember 
that he had any interest in the matter. She 
' had kept her word. There he lay, no longer 
capable of harm, that villain, without ruth or 
mercy, whom the young priest would not 
curse at her bidding, yet whom he had cursed 
in the anguish of his heart. Murdered! Vin- 
cent’s heart stood still ; his pulses refused to 
beat ; his very life forsook him at the sight. 
He stood there, gazing with the fascination of 
i horror, unaware of the curiosity that now 
! centred upon himself. Either his own eyes 
I CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


were dizzy with the spectacle, or some feeble 
power of movement still remained in the 
murdered body, but his mind was too much 
stunned to consider which it was. 

“ You must come out of here,” said the 
man at the door, grasping him rudely by the 
arm. ‘-‘Nobody’s allowed in here but the 
doctors and the police. Who is it that’s 
kept her word — eh ? What do you mean ? 
You’ll speak to the inspector, you shall, be- 
fore you get out o’ here.” 

“ Where is she ? ” said Vincent, as he 
yielded mechanically to the tonch, and fol- 
lowed the guardian of the death-room into 
another apartment. 

“ Maybe you can tell us ? ” said the sus- 
picious policeman. “ She’s kept her word, 
eh, has she? I’ll put down them words. 
You’ll wait for the inspector before you get 
out of here.” 

“ And the others,” said Vincent, waking 
slowly out of that trance of horror ; “ where 
are those unhappy girls ? they have nothing 
to do with it. One of them is my sister ; 
let me see her. I have come after that— 
that accursed villain there. God forgive 
me ; he has gone to his account — I have 
followed him to rescue my sister. Call the 
people of the house ; they will know where 
she is. What do you mean by keeping your 
hand on me ? ” 

“ ’Cause o’ what you said. She’s kep her 
word,” said the policeman. “ You just give 
an account of yourself afore you leave here. 
I don’t know about no girls ; there was one 
with him — light-haired, twenty year old or 
so, pretty looking, as is the one as has done 
the deed. Jim Daly’s gone after her. He’ll 
bring her back, I reckon, to-night, and then 
you’ll see whether she’s kep her word or 
not.” 

Vincent sat down mechanically, and gazed 
at the speaker with uncomprehending eyes. 
The fact that he himself was detained did 
not strike him at first, for Susan must be 
here ; neither was his intelligence sufficiently 
disengaged to understand that his sister was 
accused. Close by him was a bell ; he rung 
it violently, as the first means that occurred 
to him of throwing light on the matter. 
The sound brought up the terrified mistress 
of the house, attended half-way up the stair 
by a throng of curious women. The land- 
lady was only too glad to be permitted to 
speak. She poured out upon him the tragic 
15 


226 SALEM CHAPEL. 


history of the night and morning. As Vin- 
cent listened — often breaking in upon her 
at first with questions, but at length, as the 
horrible truth dawmed upon him, suddenly 
regaining his self-command, and following 
the tale with breathless dismay and terror 
— the true state of the case became dread- 
fully apparent. Susan, and no other, ap- 
peared against that lurid firmament. It 
was she who, when the sharp report of the 
pistol startled the house, was met on the 
stair, ghastly and pallid, escaping from the 
scene of the murder. The people of the 
house were profuse in regrets that they had 
suffered her to escape ; but “ when she came 
she was that innocent and distressed-look- 
ing, sir,” said the apologetic landlady. 
“ She kind o’ clung to me, sir, and said as 
they were a-going to be married ; for I 
could tell as they weren’t married, and some- 
thing was wrong. She kept close by the 
t’other miss, the poor soul did ; and how he 
got her by herself I couldn’t tell nobody. I 
reckon he druv her to it with some bad 
usage or other ; that’s all as I can tell. I 
think, for my part, as she snatched up the 
pistol to save herself. I don’t believe as it 
was wilful. My man says as it’s no worse 
nor manslaughter at the most, and that isn’t 
hanging,” cried the compassionate woman. 
Vincent started with the sudden force of 
passionate dismay and indignation as this 
horrible truth burst upon him. He thrust 
away the alarmed policeman, who was off 
his guard. “ Where is she ! ” cried the 
young man. She! Don’t you understand 
me ? the woman who followed him, tracked 
him, vowed to kill him — have none of you 
seen her ? Fools ! do you think an innocent 
girl could do it ? Where is that woman ? 
Has she come into the house like a ghost 
without being seen ? I tell you she vowed 
to kill him, and she has done it. Search 
the house ; perhaps she is still here.” 

“ Lord bless us ! the poor young gentle- 
man’s gone out o’ his senses. There’s been 
nobody here but the young woman,” cried 
the landlady. “Not a soul, sir, you may 
take my word ; it was nobody else as done 
it. O Lord ! what’s the good of struggling ? 
Let him go through all the house, if that’s 
what he wants, p’liceman. There aint noth- 
ing to conceal in my house. I feel for him, I 
do. He’s welcome to search all through, he 
is. There aint no woman a-hiding here.” 


At this crisis, while Vincent, half-crazed 
with the intolerable horror of this new blow, 
struggled fiercely with the man who had 
mounted guard upon him, the inspector, a 
cool and wary Scotchman, made his appear- 
ance. The sight of a person endued with 
some authority recalled the unhappy young 
man to himself. Before this new judge the 
whole case was stated, and Vincent eagerly 
described Mrs. Hilyard, whom in other cir- 
cumstances he might have tried to screen 
and cover, but whom now he was feverishly 
anxious to have identified, as having been 
at least seen by somebody in the house. But 
his little audience looked at him with in- 
credulous faces, the policeman suspicioqs, 
the woman compassionate, the inspector at- 
tentive and taking notes, l^obody had seen 
her ; nothing had occurred to direct atten- 
tion from Susan ; no passing figure or sus- 
picious footstep had complicated the direct 
unbroken evidence which seemed to connect 
the unhappy girl with this crime. She in- 
spector, however, who was sufficiently ex- 
perienced to know that the clearest appar- 
ent conclusion is not always the true one, 
yielded to Vincent’s entreaties so far as to 
have the house searched. No one, of 
course was to be found. Up-stairs, in one 
of the bedrooms, lay a flimsy piece of 
gauze, which excited Vincent almost be- 
yond the possibility of self-control. It was 
the blue veil — fatal ensign of misery; he 
seized it in his hands, and would liave torn 
it like a maniac. Then a wiser suggestion 
came to his disturbed mind. Where was 
the girl? She had disappeared stealthily 
and unseen. She had not gone with Susan, 
who had left the house alone, as all the peo- 
ple about could prove. Who had conveyed 
away this helpless, beautiful child, for 
whom the disguise of the veil was no longer 
needed ? Even the inspector was roused 
by this thickening of the mystery. It be- 
gan to appear probable that some other 
secret agent had been somehow involved. 
The suggestion, however, made the people 
of the house indignant. The landlady’s 
sympathy for Susan turned into hot resent- 
ment and indignation. She began to feel 
her own character involved in the proof of 
her statement, that nobody else had entered 
the house. Affairs w'ere still in this state, 
when Vincent, having satisfactorily proved 
that he arrived only the night before, and 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


could not possibly have anything to do with 
the murder, was permitted to go away to 
hasten to his distressed mother at Carling- 
ford. He went, tortured with the most 
horrible apprehensions as was natural, 
afraid to hope that Susan had gone to her 
mother, — fearing sudden death, madness, 
or suicide, for the unhappy girl thus sud- 
denly reft out of the peacefulness of her 
youth into circumstances so desperate. 
When he entered Carlingford late at night, 
it was with insupportable pangs of suspense 
and alarm that he looked into the faces he 
met on the lighted streets. Were they 
looking at him with a consciousness of some 
horrible shadow which enveloped him ? 
Tozer’s shop was already shut — earlier 
than usual, surely ; and two or three peo- 
ple stood talking at the open door, clearly 
visible against the gaslight, which still 
burned bright within, pointing, as Vincent 
thought, across the street. Farther up, 
opposite his own house — ah, there was no 
mistaking that little throng of excited 
spectators looking up at the lighted win- 
dows. The young man rushed upon them 
with an impulse of unreasoning rage. 
“ What are you doing there ? ” he shouted 
hoarsely, to the nearest group. The by- 
standers gave way before him, half alarmed, 
half ashamed, and slunk off into the shad- 
ows, only, as his eyes, sharpened with pas- 
sion, could divine, to return again as soon 
as he was gone. The door opened at the 
sound of his voice. Several people were 
in the hall, all in an excited condition. 
Common life, with its quiet summonses and 
answers, was over. Wild confusion, agita- 
tion, breathless expectancy, surrounded him. 
His landlady came forward immediately to 
: lament her own misfortune, and upbraid 
him with the wrong he had done her. “ I 
' took in the pastor for a lodger, because he 
was sure to be respectable and steady,” cried 
the hysterical woman, “ and this is what he 
has brought upon me ! ” 

“ What is the meaning of all this ? ” said 
i Vincent, looking round him with wild fury ; 

■ but he did not wait for an answer. He went 
up to his rooms to know the worst. As he 
rushed breathless up-stairs, loud outcries of 
I delirium reached him. In his horror and 
I anguish he could not recognize the voice— 
was it his mother who had given away under 
' the terrible burden ? He dashed open the 


227 

door of the sitting-room in which he had 
spent so many quiet hours. Neither mother 
nor sister were there ; instead of them, a 
rough-featured man in a blue travelling- 
coat, and Tozer, flushed and argumentative, 
standing by the table. What the contro- 
versy was that was going on between them, 
the unhappy minister could not pause to 
think. He went up to the strange]^ seized 
him violently, and ordered him out of the 
room. He did not understand the expla- 
nation that followed, nor Tozer’s remon- 
strances. He forced the fellow to the door, 
only to be overpowered there by the inter- 
vention of the deacon, who grasped him 
firmly with arms less passionate but stronger 
than his own. “ He has the law on his 
side,” said Tozer ; “ it aint for nothing 
he’s here : for the sake of them poor women, 
keep quiet, and try and come to yourself. 
I’m your friend, Mr. Vincent — I always 
was ; I’m not one as will desert a man in 
trouble. Take time, sir, and consider, and 
come to yourself — there aint none but friends 
here.” 

CHAPTER XXV. 

When Vincent came to himself, and be- 
gan to see clearly as they were, without 
any mists of excitement to obscure them, 
the true horrors of his position, his mind, 
driven to its last stronghold, rallied convul- 
sively to meet the worst. It was Susan 
who was raving close by. In his own chair 
sat the officer of justice, with a warrant in 
his hands for the arrest of the unhappy girl ; 
and opposite to himself sat Tozer the rep- 
resentative of “ the connection ” — of Salem 

of all that gave character and bread to 

the dissenting minister — fully aware of the 
horrible circumstances by which he was now 
surrounded. Vincent recovered himself 
slowly, and looked his dreadful position 
in the face ; no concealment was possible 
now — no preserving of appearances, hard 
though the widow had fought for it. Al- 
ready all Carlingford believed that the min- 
ister’s sister was a murderess — already their 
innocent honorable name was held up to 
public odium. The young man raised him- 
self up from the sofa on which he had 
thrown himself, and faced his position, col- 
lecting all his forces. He turned his eyes 
away from the stranger, and turned them 
upon Tozer. While all was wild, unnatu- 
ral, and desperate— while he was among 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


228 

people who knew nothing of him nor his 
antecedents, it was more bearable, but the 
eyes of the butterman bent upon him, 
brought other aggravations to the misery. 
All the proprieties of his past life — the 
honor of his profession, the spotless repu- 
tation of his youth — stared upon him in 
horrible contrast out of Tozer’s dull gray 
eyes, ^ot his sister’s danger or disgrace 
alone, but his own ruin — the loss of all his 
training, the shipwreck of his life, flashed 
upon the mind of the young minister. This 
had to be faced as well as the darker and 
more frightful wretchedness. 

“If there’s anything as can be done,” 
said Tozer, “ it’s best not to lose no time in 
doing of it. I’d speak to Mr. Brown in the 
High Street, if I was you. She’s young, and 
was aggravated awful — so the man tells 
me. She might be got off.” 

“ I am not afraid for my sister — she has 
nothing to do with that,’’ said Vincent, 
waving his hand towards the stranger. 
“ She has suffered enough already— we have 
all suffered. But this is folly. It may kill 
her, but it can never stand examination. I 
have been on the spot, and know that.” 

“ If you’ve been on the spot, maybe you 
can tell what the crowner’s verdict was,” 
said the policeman, with a sneer. 

Vincent made no answer. He rose up 
and approached Tozer, whose friendly looks 
went to his heart. “ Must I endure him 
here ? ” said the poor minister, “ because of 
this horrible, false, accursed accusation, 
must I bear him here ? ” 

“ Mr. Vincent, sir, you mustn’t swear. 
I’m as sorry for you as a man can be ; but 
you’re a minister, and you mustn’t give 
way,” said Tozer. “ I’ve been a-trying of 
him if bail could be took, but they say bail 
can’t be took in a case of murder, and — not 
meaning to say nothing to vex you — he 
tells me as the evidence is clear again her. 
Well, I wont say no more — to think as a 
young creature, and a minister’s daughter, 
and a mother like what she’s got, could go 
and do anything like that, it aint what a 
man can believe, Mr. Vincent, whatever 
anybody says ; and your own father, if he 
was living couldn’t be more sorry nor me. 
But my advice is, keep him here quiet, and 
don’t let nothing get out no more nor can 
be helped ; and if it aint true, it’ll be found 
out and settled afore the young lady’s able 


to be moved. It’s a dispensation o’ Provi- 
dence that she’s took so bad now. Hear to 
her, poor soul ! — but, Mr. Vincent,” said 
Tozer, drawing him close, and conflding his 
doubt in a whisper, “ w^hat she says is best 
not to be listened to, if you’M take my ad- 
vice. It aint to be built upon what a poor 
creature says in a fever, but them sort of 
words and screechings don’t come out of 
nothing but a troubled mind. She might 
be under great temptation, and do it in a 
moment unawares. Well, I’ll not say no 
more ; but my advice is, as you keep the 
man quiet here, and don’t say nothing about 
it as can be helped. If it could be kept 
private from the Salem folks,”' said Tozer, 
not without some anxiety in .his face, “ it 
would be for the best. Them women do 
make such a talk about everything. I 
wouldn’t undertake to say but there might 
be some unpleasantness about it, Mr. Vin- 
cent,” added the worthy deacon, looking up 
at him with troubled eyes, “ though how 
anybody could go for to blame you. But 
there’s pretty sure to be some unpleasant- 
ness, and the only way as I can see is just 
to put up with it, and stand your ground, and 
do your duty all the same. And I for one 
will stand by you, sir,” said Tozer, rising to 
his feet with a little glow of conscious gen- 
erosity and valor, and shaking the hand of 
the poor young minister with cordial kind- , 
ness — “ I’ll stand by you, sir, for one, what- 
ever happens; and we’ll tide it out, Mr.. 
Vincent, that’s what we’ll do, sir, if you can ' 
but hold on.” . 

“ Thank you,” said poor Wincent, moved 
to the heart — “ thank you. I dare not 
think how it is all to end, but thank you all ‘ 
the same ; I shall not forget what you say.” | 
“ And tell your mother,” continued Tozer, j 
swelling to a little triumph in his own mag-1 
nanimity — “tell your mother, as I said so ;J 
tell her as I’ll stand by you through thickij 
and thin ; and we’ll pull through, we’ll pull® 
through ! ” said the butterman, slowly dis-fj 
appearing, with a face radiant with consciousll 
bounty and patronage, through the open^ 
door. ^ 

Vincent had followed him with an instinct! 
of civility and gratitude. Just as Tozer* 
withdrew, a fresh burst of outcry came from* 
the sick-room, ringing through the excited® 
house. The deacon turned round half-way* 
down the stair, held up his hands, listened,* 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 229 


and made a movement of wondering pity 
' towards the closed door which hid Susan, 
but did not keep in her cries. The wretched 
minister drew back? from that compassion- 
ate gesture as if some one had struck him a 
blow. He went back and threw himself 
down on the sofa, and covered his face with 
I his hands. The pity and the patronage 
I were the last drop of humiliation in his bit- 
I ter cup. Hot tears came to his eyes ; and 
I there, beside him, was Susan’s pursuer, 
I watchful and silent, spying upon his misery. 
1 It seemed to him more than flesh and blood 
could bear. 

Some time elapsed, however, before Vin- 

* cent had the courage to meet his mother. 
When those dreadful outcries sank into ex- 
haustion, and all for the moment was quiet 

; in the sick-room, he sent to tell her he had 
■ arrived, and went to the dreadful door which 

* she kept closed so jealously. He was afraid 

t to meet her eye when she came to him, and 
noiselessly drew him within. Judging by 
I himself, he had not ventured to think what 
his mother’s horror and despair would be. 

■ But Mrs. Vincent put her arms round her 
son with an exclamation of thanksgiving. 
“ O Arthur, thank God yob are come ! 
Now I shall be able to bear it,” cried his 
mother. She cried a little upon his breast, 
and then wiped her eyes and looked up at 
' him with quivering lips. “ O Arthur, what 
my poor darling must have come through ! ” 
said Mrs. Vincent, with a wistful appeal to 
him in her tender eyes. She said nothing 
of the darker horror. It lay upon her soul 
a frightful, inarticulate shadow ; but in the 
mean time she could only think of Susan 
and her fever — that fever which afforded a 
kind of comfort to the.mother — a proof that 
[ her child had not lost her innocence lightly, 
! but that the shock had been to Susan a hor- 
rible convulsion, shaking earth and heaven. 
The mother and son went together to the 
bedside to look at the unhappy cause of all 
j their sorrows— she clinging with her 'tender 
r hand to his arm, wistful now, and afraid in 
! the depths of her heart lest Arthur, who was 
^ only a man, might be hard upon Susan in 
■ her terrible abasement. It was more than 
a year since Vincent had seen his sister. 
Was it Susan .f* The grandeur of the 
stricken form, the features sublimed and 
elevated, the majestic proportions into 
which this awful crisis of fate had devel- 


oped the fair-haired girl of Lonsdale, struck 
her brother with unspeakable awe and pity. 
Pity and awe ; but yet another feeling min- 
gled in the wonder with which he gazed 
upon her. A thrill of terror came over 
him. That frightful, tropical blaze of pas- 
sion, anguish, and woe which ' had pro- 
duced this sudden development, had it de- 
veloped no unknown qualities in Susan’s 
heart ? As she lay there in the majesty of 
unconsciousness, she resembled more a 
woman who could avenge herself, than a 
sqft girl, the sudden victim of a bad man. 
Vincent turned away from the bed with an 
involuntary shudder. He would not, could 
not, look at her again : he left his mother 
to her unceasing vigil, and himself went to 
his own room, to try if rest were possible. 
Rest, with his sister accused of murder, a 
prisoner in the hands of justice — with that 
rude sentinel of the law watching lest his 
prisoner should escape him, making an im- 
promptu couch of Vincent’s sofa — with Susan 
herself so strangely changed, turned to an- 
other creature, suggesting to her brother’s 
mind awful involuntary visions of passion- 
ate self-defence, self-horror, revenge, at the 
suggestion of which his very heart failed 
within him — but weariness is omnipotent 
with youth. He did sleep by snatches, in 
utter fatigue and exhaustion — slept long 
enough to secure for himself the unspeaka- 
ble torture of waking to the renewed horror 
of a new day. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

To find Susan’s pursuer in the parlor when 
he entered it next morning — to see this man 
seated at breakfast, in horrible composure 
and cheerfulness, within hearing of his sis- 
ter’s ravings, was almost more than Vincent 
could bear. He had to subdue himself by 
every argument of necessity before he could 
bring his mind to tolerate the presence of 
the man who, after all, was compassionate 
enough, and as unobtrusive, as a man could 
be, whose presence alone was the most un- 
bearable of all intrusions. The minister 
wasted no time in that desecrated room. 
When he had seen his mother, who whis- 
pered to him accounts of Susan’s illness 
which his brain was too much excited to 
take in, he went away immediately to the 
railway, and hastened to town, where he 
went to consult a lawyer, and to secure the 


230 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


attention of the detective police, in whose pearance of the girl of whom he knew her 
miracles of skill he had, like other inexperi- : to be in search, and all the suspicious cir- 
enced people, the most perfect confidence, I cumstances involved, to the keen detective. 


to Mrs. Hilyard and his own suspicions. 
Vincent w'as not rich — all that he had in 
the world would scarcely be enough to retain 
a fit defender for his unhappy sister, if she 
had to undergo that frightful ordeal. Would 
it not be better if she died, and escaped that 
last crowning misery ? He took up the 
papers as the thought entered his mind, 
w'hile he was still waiting in the lawyer’s 
office. There he found the whole terrible 
tale made into a romance o# real life, wifh 
details which made him half mad. As he 
stood wiping the heavy dew from his fore- 
head, almost fr-antic with rage and despair, 
the quick eye of his misery caught a couple 
of clerks in another corner of the office, 
over another newspaper, full of lively inter- 
est and excitement. It was Susan’s story 
that interested them ; the compiler of it had 
heightened with romantic details those hid- 
eous bare facts which had changed all his 
life, and made the entire world a chaos to 
Vincent ; and all over the country, by this 
time, newspaper readers were waking up 
into excitement about this new case of love, 
revenge, and crime. The minister dashed 
the paper from his hands, and trod on it 
with an insane impulse ; not enough to be 
rent asunder in heart and life — not enough 
to have every hope quenched out of his 
firmament, and every possibility of honor 
or happiness extinguished from his exist- 
ence ; but the whole public of England must 
be amused with his agonies, and find the 
excitement of a romance in the worse than 
ruin which was ov-erwhelming his humble 
house. To go to the cool lawyer just then, 
to subdue the fever of powerless resentment 
against the world, and rebellion against his 
own fate, and to enter into all the particu- 
lars of his business with sufficient calmness 
to be understood, was a hard matter ; but 
perhaps it was well for Vincent that he had 
to do it. To be obliged to talk of this fright- 
ful tragedy as a matter of business, was good 
for him ; it brought him down to necessary 
fact, and calmed the passion which had 
almost overmastered his powers. When 
he had secured the service of the solicitor 
who would manage Susan’s case, if it must 
come to that, and described Mrs. Hilyard, 
her appearance at the railway, the disap- 


who was to set out upon the track instantly, 
the Nonconformist returned to Carlingford 
with a mind somewhat calmed out of its 
first horror. The story did not convulse the 
nerves of the calm lawyer with shivers of 
wonder or pain; he entered into it quietly, 
without any particular expression of feeling ; 
the detective officer was not shocked ; alto- 
gether, this episode calmed Vincent, and 
enabled him to regard the whole matter with 
less excited eyes. He went back again by 
the train, deeply depressed and anxious, but 
not so susceptible to every glance and word 
as he had been an hour or two before. He 
tried to take a certain gloomy satisfaction 
from the fact that now everything was 
known. Fear of discovery could no longer 
appall the stricken household ; and to meet 
the horror in the face was less dreadful than 
to feel themselves skulking under a secret 
shadow which might at any moment be found 
out. He set his face . sternly, and looked 
everybody full in the eyes who looked at 
him, as he once more alighted at the familiar 
station. He accepted the fact that people 
were talking of him, pitying him, contem- 
plating him with wonder and fright, as some- 
how involved in an atmosphere of tragedy 
and crime. With this feeling he went slowly 
along George Street on his homeward way, 
with no susceptibility left in him, so far as 
he was aware, except as concerned this sud- 
den calamity which had swallowed up his 
life. 

When suddenly the sound of a carriage 
stopping came dully upon his ears ; he would 
not have noted or heard it but for the sound 
that followed of some one calling his own 
name, and the soft rush of footsteps on the 
pavement ; even then he did not turn round 
to see who called him. It was accordingly 
with a thrill of strange emotion — a strange, 
sudden, guilty suffusion of delight over all 
his tingling frame and aching heart, even in 
the midst of his suffering, that he felt the 
light touch of Lady Western’s hand first 
laid on his arm, then softly stealing within 
it in the sudden sympathy which possessed 
her as she looked up into his colorless face. 
It was pity and natural kindness which 
prompted the young Dowager to this un- 
wonted familiar touch. She was soiTy for 


CHRONICLES OF 

Him to the bottom of her heart — she would j 
fain have made him amends somehow for 
the terrible evil which had come upon him. 
With the natural impulse of a woman to 
caress or soothe, or cheat a man anyhow out 
of that look of suffering which it is intolera- 
• ble to her to see on his face, Lady Western 
acted instinctively, without thinking what 
she did. She slid her beautiful hand into 
his arm clung to him, looked up with her 
lovely appealing face and eyes full of tears 
to the pale face of the minister, which that 
touch moved beyond all expression. If he 
did not stop and take her into his arms, and 
lean his great anguish upon her in a sweet- 
ness of relief unspeakable and measureless, 
it was only because ordinary rule and cus- 
tom are stronger than even passion. He 
r was as much deceived as if he had done it, 
t the poor young deluded soul. Out of the 
E thunder and storm, all at once, without 
j prelude or warning, he thought it was the 
f I'ight of love that broke upon him all radiant 
and glorious. With that he could brave all, 
j; overcome all ; for that he could be content 
to fathom any depths of wretchedness. So 
j he thought as he looked dowft from those 
|! sudden heights of unhopedvfor tremulous 
I' blessedness into that lovely face, and saw it 
f trembling with divine compassion and ten- 
I derness. So he thought, the ice breaking, 
the depths stirring in his own soul. Hope, 
deliverance, happiness, a delight more ex- 
quisite still, that consolation of love which 
makes anguish itself sweet, breathed over 
the poor young Nonconformist as that hand 
slid within his arm. His very brain grew 
dizzy with the sweetness of relief, the sud- 
den ease that possessed his soul. 

“ O Mr. Vincent, my heart is breaking ; 
what shall we do — what shall we do ? ” cried 
Lady Western. “ If it is true, I shall never 
I dare speak to you again, and I feel for you 
to the bottom of my heart, 0 Mr. Vincent, 
you don’t think she did it ? I am sure she 
did not do it — your sister! It was bad 
enough before,” cried the lovely creature, 
dying without restraint, but still holding 
his arm and gazing up into his face, “ but 
now my heart is broken. Oh, will you tell 
me what I must do ? I will not go to him, 
for he has been a bad man, and I dare not 
go to your dear mother as I should like to 
go J and I feel for you, oh, to the very bot- 
tom of my heart ! ” 


CARLINGFORD. 231 

“ Then I can bear it,” said Vincent. 
Though he did not speak another word, the 
sound of his voige, the expression of his 
face, betrayed him. He put his hand in- 
voluntarily upon the little hand that rested 
on his arm. It was all so sudden that his 
self-command forsook him. A smile trem- 
bled upon his face as he looked down at her 
with all his heart in his eyes. “ Then I can 
bear it,” said the poor young minister, over- 
whelmed and penetrated by that exquisite 
consolation. Lady Western gave a little 
start of alarm as she read the unmistakable 
meaning in his face. She withdrew her hand 
hastily with a flush of radiant color and 
downcast look of fright and shame. What 
had she done ? Her confusion, her agita- 
tion, her sudden withdrawal did but increase 
the spell. To Vincent’s charmed soul it 
seemed that she had betrayed herself, and 
that womanly reserve alone drew her back. 
He attended her to her carriage with a ten- 
der devotion which could not express itself 
in words. When he had put her in, he 
lingered, gazing at the face, now so troubled 
and downcast, with a delicious feeling that 
he had a right to gaze at her. “You have 
made me strong to bear all things,” he said, 
in the low tone of- passion and secret joy. 
In the depth of his delusion he saw no other 
meaning but sudden timidity and womanly 
reticence in her confused and alarmed looks. 
When the carriage drove off he stood look- 
ing after it with eyes full of dreamy light. 
Darkness surrounded him on every side, 
darkness more hideous than a nightmare. 
The poor young soul believed for that de- 
licious moment that superlative and ineffable, 
like his misery, was to be his joy. 

Harder thoughts regained the mastery 
when he got within his own house again. 
It was no longer the orderly, calm, well- 
regulated house which had taken in the 
minister of Salem by way of adding yet a 
finer touch to its own profound respecta- 
bility. Susan’s unhappy presence pervaded 
the place. Boxes of other lodgers going 
away encumbered the hall, where the land- 
lady hovered weeping, and admitted the 
pastor sullenly with an audible sob. Though 
he had now armor of light against all these 
petty assaults, Vincent was not strong 
enough, even in the fictitious strength given 
by Lady Western, to encounter once more 
in his sitting-room the odious presence of 


232 SALEM CHAPEL. 


that watcher who sat there intent upon his 
duty, near enough to hear any commotion 
that might arise in the sick-room. The man 
was seated by the window with a newspaper 
in his hand, a sight which roused Vincent 
into unreasonable exasperation. He went 
up to him with uncontrollable passion. 

“ Why must you stay here ? ” he cried. 
“You know, the doctor has assured you, 
that she cannot be removed. Do you think 
we could steal her away,” said the excited 
young man, pointing to the room from which 
poor Susan’s voice was now and then audi- 
ble, “ without all the world knowing ? Stay 
outside, and I will give you anything in the 
world. Can’t you understand that it is mad- 
dening to see you here ? and that I daren’t 
turn you out by force,” said Vincent, invol- 
untarily, with menacing looks, advancing 
upon the alarmed policeman, “for — for 
her sake ” 

“ You’re as safe not to try that,” cried the 
man. “ I can soon get assistance wherever 
I am. I’m sorry for you, but it aint no use 
speaking. I must do my duty. If you ap- 
ply to the magistrates, they wont do you no 
good. I’ve got to look after my prisoner. 
If I was you, I’d smuggle her away some- 
how, ravin’ or not ravin’ > and I wont trust 
no man’s word where I wouldn’t trust myself. 
Besides, I aint got no choice — it’s my duty. 
No, sir, I can’t go outside — I must stop 
here.” 

Vincent stood looking at his opponent for 
a moment with burning eyes. If he turned 
this man out of the house, pitched him out 
of the window, threw him down-stairs as 
impulse suggested, it could only give a 
momentary relief to his passion — it could 
do nothing but harm to Susan and Susan’s 
cause. He restrained himself as best he 
could, half-conscious that it was the petu- 
lance of misery which moved him. He had 
already made up his mind to have patience 
until his solicitor had examined the whole 
matter, and used every means that were 
possible to relieve them of this odious watch ; 
but patience was hard when he found him- 
self in actual presence of the sentinel. As 
he paced about the room making vain efforts 
at self-restraint, the man, who had already 
showed many symptoms of good-nature, 
made an effort to console him. 

“ You see the good news, sir, I dare say, 


in the paper ? ” he said tapping it with his 
hand. 

“ Good news ! There is no good news 
possible to me,” said Vincent. “ It may be 
your duty to remain here ; but to insult our 
misery will do no good even to you.” 

“ I don’t mean no offence,” said the feL 
low, with good-tempered tolerance. “I 
mean somethin’ as may be a comfort to you, 
be as high as you will. The gen’leman aint 
dead, that’s all. I see it in the paper. It 
beat me how as I never heard the crowner’s 
verdict, nor what she was . brought in — wil- 
ful, or what else ; but here it is clear enough. 
He aint dead — that’s the news as I wanted 
you to know.” 

“Not dead ! ” Vincent put up his hands 
to his head to deaden out from his half- 
stupefied senses all the distracting sounds 
about, and to realize, if he could, what it 
was he had just heard. What was it ? Su- 
san in the next room, sometimes moaning, 
sometimes crying aloud, adjuring her mother 
to come, come ! to save her — to take her 
home; sometimes sighing out heart-break- 
ing entreaties, appeals, remonstrances, inco- 
herent as the shattered mind that produced 
them ? Not dead ! who was not dead ? his 
sister, poor wreck of youth and hope — oh, 
would to God she could but die ! Not dead ! 
He could not make it out— -perhaps he too 
had seen it in the paper. As he tried to 
collect his thoughts and follow out the clue, 
everything seemed to return to him but this 
one thing, which was good news. Fordham 
—Mrs. Hilyard— the girl with the blue veil 
— with the thought of that blue veil, fright- 
ful emblem of all confusion and misery, his 
mind went off to the spot where he had last 
seen it lying on the sordid floor in the mean 
Dover inn : then sudden light broke upon 
him. Not dead ! He began to recall the 
dreadful scene into which he had burst when 
he first entered that house. The figure on 
the bed, the shattered head, the spasmodic 
movement which he thought was in his own 
eyes. Not dead ! It did not seam like good 
news to Vincent. “ The cursed villain ! ” 
he said through his clenched teeth. The 
earth, then, was not rid of that pitiless 
wretch. He did not connect it anyhow with 
possible relief or deliverance for Susan. He 
received it as strange information, unex- 
pected, and raising in his own bosom all 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 233 


I 


I 


I 

I 


the resentment and rage which had been 
quenched by the supposed death. “ He 
shall render me an account,” said Vincent 
fiercely to himself. “Not dead ! He shall 
answer for it to me. God help me, what 
am I saying ? ” When he looked up, he 
found the eyes of the officer fixed'upon him, 
watchful and on the alert. These words, 
which he had uttered unawares, were al- 
ready recorded in the ready memory which 
treasured up every jot of evidence. The 
young man looked at him with a certain 
helpless wonder, almost awe. He forgot to 
be angry. This perpetual watchfulness be- 
gan to thrill him wdth a superstitious alarm. 

“ What is your name ? ” he asked in a low 
tone. 

“James Daly, at your service — known by 
more nor one byname in our way of busi- 
ness. What they call a nom-de-ger,” said 
the man, in a propitiatory tone. “ Don’t 
be afeard of me : W'hat a gen’leman says in 
the fulness of his heart I don’t take down 
again him — not unless he’s the person ac- 
cused,” added Daly, with a penetrating sig- 
nificant glance. Vincent got up hastily, 
with a sensation of almost trembling. He 
emptied out of his purse with nervous fin- 
gers the two or three gold pieces remaining 
in it, and humbly slid them into the hard hand 
of his strange companion. “ Thank you. 
I dare say they will soon send for you to go 
away,” said Vincent. He hastened out of 
the room after he had done this. He went 
and shut himself up in his own sleeping- 
room, and tried to consider the matter. 
Then, as consideration was impossible, he 
went to Susan’s room to see his mother, 
whom he had. not seen since he returned ; 
but Mrs. Vincent was deaf and insensible to ! 
everything but her child, whose need and j 
danger were too urgent to permit more dis- 
tinct spectres, however terrible, to be visible 
in her sick-chamber. Mary, already worn 
out with fatigue, had gone to bed with a 
headache, with the liveliest conviction in 
her mind that she had taken the fever too. 
The widow, who had lived for the past week 
as though she had no physical frame at all, j 
sat sleepless, with hot eyes and pallid face, j 
by her daughter’s bed. She could still i 
smile — smiles more heartbreaking than any s 
outcry of anguish — and 
head upon her son, as he came near to 
with a tender pressure of her arms 


strain of absolute dependence which went to 
his heart. She could not speak, or say, as 
she had said so often, that her boy must 
take care of his sister — that Susan had no 
one else to stand by her. Leaning upon 
him in an unspeakable appeal of love and 
weakness, smiling on him with her wistful 
quivering lips, was all the poor mother 
could do now. 

All ; for in that room no one could speak. 

I One voice filled its silence. The restless 
movement of the head on that pillow', turn- 
ing from side to side in search of the rest 
which was nowhere to be found, stilled every 
other motion. Not even fever could flush 
the marble whiteness of her face. Awfully 
alone, in her mother’s anxious presence, 
with her brother by her bedside, Susan went 
on unconscious through the wild distracted 
world of her own thoughts — through what 
had been her owm thoughts before horror 
and anguish cast them all astray. Vincent 
stood aside in breathless attention like the 
rest, before he had been many minutes in 
the room. We say to each other how 
strange it is that no heart can ever fully 
communicate itself to another; but when 
I that revelation does take place, awful is the 
j spectacle. All unawares, in her dread ab- 
straction, Susan opened up her heart. 

“ What does it matter what they will 
say ? ” said Susan ; “I will never see them 
I again. Unless — yes, put down her veil ; 
j she is pretty, very pretty ; but what has 
j Herbert to do with her ? He said it was 
! me he wanted ; and why did he bring me 
I away if he did not love me ? Love me ! and 
I deceived me, and told me lies. O God, O 
j God, is it not Carlingford ? Where is it ? 

, I am taking God’s name in vain. I was not 

thinking of him ; I was thinking His 

name is Fordham, Herbert Fordham, — do 
you hear ? What do you mean by Mild- 
may ? I know no Mildmay. Stop, and let 
me think. Herbert — Herbert ! Oh, where 
are you — where are you ? Do you think it 
never could be him, but only a lie ? Well ! 
if he did not love me, I could bear it ; but 
why, why did he cheat me, and bring me 
away ? The door is locked ; they will not 
let me get out. Herbert ! was there never, 
never any Herbert in the world ? Oh, come 
back, even if you are only a dream ! 

If they would only kill me ! 
they mean to do with me ? O 


leaned her 


poor 
her, 
and I 


Locked ! 
W’^hat do 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


234 

God, O God ! but I must marry him if he 
says so. I must, must marry him, though 
he has toid me lies. I must, whatever he 
does. Even if I could get through the 
window and escape ; for they will call me 
wicked. Oh, mamma, mamma ! and Arthur 
a minister, and to bring disgrace on him. 
But I am not disgraced. Oh, no, no ; 
never, never ! — I will die first — I will kill 
him first. Open the door ; oh, open the 
door ! Let me go ! ” 

She struggled up in one of her wilder 
paroxysms. She had thrown herself half 
out of bed, rising up wildly, and tossing her 
arms into the air, before her startled brother 
could rush forward to control her. But as 
the voice of the unhappy girl rose into 
frenzy, some unseen attendants stole in and 
took her out of his unskilful hands. The 
sight was too painful for unaccustomed 
eyes — for eyes of love, which could scarcely 
bear, even for her own sake, to see such 
means of restraint employed upon Susan. 
Mrs. Vincent stood by, uttering unconscious 
cries, imploring the two strong women w'ho 
held her daughter, oh, not to hurt her, not 
to grasp her so tightly ; while Susan her- 
self beat the air in vain, and entreated, 
with passionate outcries, to be set free — to 
be let go. When she was again subdued, 
and sank into the quiet of exhaustion, Vin- 
cent withdrew from this saddest scene of 
all, utterly depressed and broken-spirited. 
The wretch lived who had wrought this 
dread wreck and ruin. What did it matter ? 
Within that room it gave no relief, eased no 
heart, to say that he was not dead. Forms 
more terrific still than those of law and 
public vengeance, — madness and death, — 
stood on either side' of Susan’s bed; till 
they had fought out the desperate quarrel, 
what matter to those most immediately 
concerned who kept watch close by, or 
whether a greater or a lesser penalty low- 
ered over her head ? The minister went 
back to his own retirement with an aching 
heart, utterly dejected and depressed. He 
threw himself into a chair to think it all 
over, as he said to himself ; but •as he sat 
there, hopeless and solitary, his mind strayed 
from Susan. Could any one blame him? 
Who does not know what it is to have one 
sweet spot of personal consolation to fly to 
in the midst of trouble ? Vincent betook 


himself there in the utter darkness of every- 
thing around. Once more he seemed to 
feel that sudden touch which took away half 
his burden. No words could have spoken 
to his heart like that fairy hand upon his 
arm. He brooded over it, not thinking, 
only living over again the moment which 
had made so great a difierence in the world. 
He forgot Fordham ; he forgot everything ; 
he took neither reason nor likelihood with 
him in his self-delusion. A sudden rosy 
mist suffused once more the cruel earth 
upon which he was standing ; whatever 
came, he had something of his own to fall 
back upon, an ineffable secret sweetness, 
which stanched every wound before it was 
made. The young minister, out of the very 
depths of his calamity, escaped into this 
garden of delights ; he put aside the intol- 
erable misery of the house ; he thrust away 
from him all the lesser troubles which bris- 
tled thick in front of him in the very name 
of Salem. He fled to that one spot of joy 
which he thought remained to him in the 
middle of the waste, doubly sweet and pre- 
cious. It gave him strength to hold out 
through his trouble, without being over- 
whelmed. He escaped to that delicious 
resting-place almost against his will, not 
able to resist the charm of the indescribable 
solace he found there. He alone, of all 
concerned, had that footbreadth of personal 
happiness to take refuge in amid the bitter 
storm. He did not know it was all delusion, 
self-deception,, a woful, miserable blunder. 
He hugged it to his heart in secret, and took 
a comfort not to be spoken from the thought. 
Vanity of vanities ; but nothing else in the 
world could have stolen with such fairy 
balms of consolation and strength to the 
heart of the poor minister. It was not long 
till he was called to face his fate again, and 
all the heavy front of battle set in array 
against him ; but it was with a feeling of 
sweet guilt that he started up in the winter 
twilight, and left his room to see Tozer, who 
waited for him below. That room hence- 
forward was inhabited by the fairy vision. 
When he went back to it. Love, the consol- 
atrix, met him again, stealing that visionary 
hand within his arm. Blank darkness 
dwelt all around ; here, falsest, fairest mi- 
rage of imagination, palpitated one deli- 
cious gleam of light. 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

Somehow the heavy week stole round 
without any other fluctuations but those 
terrible ones of Susan^s fever. Dreadful 
consolation and terrible doubt breathed 
torth in those heartrending revelations 
which her poor unconscious soul was con- 
tinually pouring forth. The unhappy girl 
showed her heart all naked and undisguised 
to the watchers round her — a heart bewil- 
dered, alarmed, desperate, but not over- 
whelmed with guilty passion. Through 
I the dreadful haze which enveloped her 
j mind, flashes of indignation, bursts of hope, 

I shone tragical and fierce ; but she was not a 
disgraced creature who lay there, arguing 
pitifully with herself what she must do ; not 
disgraced — but in an agony of self-preserva- 
tion could she have snatched up the ready 
pistol — could it be true ? When Vincent 
.went into that room, it was always to with- 
draw with a shuddering dread. Had she 
escaped one horror to fall into another yet 
ntbre horrible? That evidence of which, 
with Mrs. Hilyard’s face before his eyes, he 
had been half contemptuous at first, re- 
turned upon him with ever-growing proba- 
bility. Driven to bay, driven mad, reason 
and self-control scared by the horrible emer- 
* gency, had the desperate creature resorted 
I to the first wild expedient within her reach 
to save herself at last ? With this hideous 
•likelihood growing in his mind, Vincent had 
to face the Sunday, which came upon him 
like a new calamity. He would fain have 
withdrawn, and, regardless of anything else 
which might happen, have sent once more 
for Beecher. To confront the people of 
Salem, to look down upon those fiimil- 
iar rows of faces, all of them bearing a 
consciousness of the story in the newspa- 
pers, of the inmate w^ho had possession of 
poor Vincent’s sitting-room, of his land- 
lady’s despair, and the terrible misfortune 
which had befallen his family, seemed n^ore 
than flesh and blood could bear. He was 
sitting alone in a little room down-stairs, in 
■which he had found refuge from the dread- 
, ful society of James Daly, with a letter 
; which he had commenced to write to Beecher 
before him, when Tozer* who was now his 
constant visitor, came in. There could be 
no doubt of the butterman’s honest and 
genuine sympathy, but, unfortunately, there 
was just as little doubt that Tozer took a 


235 

pleasure in managing the minister’s affairs 
at this crisis, and piloting him through the 
troubled waters. Tozer did all but neglect 
his business to meet the emergency : he car- 
ried matters with rather a high hand in the 
meetings *of the managing committee ; he 
took absolute control, or wished to do so, of 
Vincent’s proceedings. “ We’ll tide it over, 
we’ll tide it over,” he said, rubbing his 
hands. To go in, in this state of mind, se- 
cure in his own resources and in the skill 
with which he could guide the wavering 
mind of Salem, fluctuating as it did between 
horror and sympathy, doubtful whether to 
take up the minister’s cause with zeal, or to 
cast him off and disown him, and to find 
the minister himself giving in, deserting 
his post at the most' critical moment, and 
making useless all that his patron was do- 
ing for him, was too much for the deacon’s 
patience. He sat down in indignant sur- 
prise opposite Vincent, and struck his stick 
against the flhor involuntarily, by way of 
emphasis to his words. “ Mr. Vincent, sir, 
this aint the thing to do, I tell you it aint 
the thing to do. Salem lias a right to expect 
different,” cried Tozer, in the warmth of 
his disappointment ; “ a congregation as has 
never said a word, and office-bearers as 
have stuck to you and stood up for you 
whatever folks liked to say ! I’m a man as 
will never desert my pastor in trouble ; but 
I’d like to know what you call this Mr. Vin- 
cent, but a deserting of me. What’s the 
good of fighting for the minister, if he gives 
in and sends for another man, and wont 
face nothing for himself? It’s next Sun- 
day as is all the battle. Get that over, and 
things will come straight. When they see 
you in the pulpit in your old way, and all 
things as they was, bless you, they’ll get 
used to it, and wont mind the papers no 
more nor — nor I do. I tell you,^sir, it’s 
next Sunday as is the battle. I don’t un- 
dertake to answer for the consequences, not 
if you gives in, and has Mr. Beecher down 
for next Sunday. It aint the thing to do, 
Mr. Vincent ; Salem folks wont put up with, 
that. ’ Your good mother, poor thing would- 
n’t say no different. If you mean to stay 
and keep things straight in Carlingford, 
you’ll go into that pulpit, and look as if 
nothing had happened. It’s next Sunday 
as is the battle.” 

“ Look as if nothing had happened ! and 


23G SALEM 

whj. should I wish to stay in Carlingford, 
or — or anywhere ? ” cried Vincent, in a fan- 
tastic outbreak of dejection. But he threw 
down his pen, and closed his blotting-book 
over the half-written letter. He was too 
wretched to have much resolution one way 
or another. To argue the matter was worse 
than to suffer any consequences, however 
hard they might be. 

“ I don’t deny it’s natural as you should 
feel strange,” admitted Tozer. “ I do my- 
self, as am only your friend, Mr. Vincent, 
when folks are a-talking in the shop, and 
going over one thing and another — what 
relation she is to the minister, and how she 
come to be left all alone, and how a minis- 
ter’s daughter ever come to know the likes 
of him ” 

“ For Heaven’s sake, no more, no more ! 
— you will drive me mad ! ” cried Vincent, 
springing to his feet. Tozer, thus suddenly 
interrupted, stared a little, and then changed 
the subject, though without quite finding 
out how it was that he had startled his sen- 
sitive companion into such sudden impa- 
tience. “ \Vhen I was only telling him the 
common talk ! ” as he said to his wife in the 
privacy of their own parlor! In the mean 
time he had other subjects equally interest- 
ing. 

“ If you’ll take my advice, you’ll begin 
your coorse all the same,” said Tozer ; “ it 
would have a good effect, that would. When 
folks are in a state of excitement, and 
a-looking for something, to come down 
upon them as before, and’accordin’ to inti- 
mation, would have a w'onderful effect, Mr. 
Vincent. You take my word, it would be 
very telling — would' that. Don’t lose no 
time, but begin your coorse as was inti- 
mated. It’s a providence, is the intimation. 
I wouldn’t say nothing about what’s hap- 
pened — not plain out ; but if you could 
bring in a kind of an inference like, nothing 
as had anything to do with your sister, but 
just as might be understood ” 

The butterman sat quite calmly and at his 
ease, but really anxious and interested, mak- 
ing his sober suggestions. The unfortunate 
minister, unable otherwise to subdue his 
impatience and wretchedness, fell to walk- 
ing up and down the room, as was natural. 
When he could bear it no longer, he came 
back to the table at which Tozer sat in all 
the pomp of advice and management. He 


CHAPEL. 

took his unfinished letter and tore it in lit- 
tle pieces, then stopped the calm flow of the 
deacon’s counsel by a sudden, agitated out- 
burst. 

“I will preach,” cried the young man, 
scattering the bits of paper out of his hand 
unawares. “ Is not that enough ? don’t tell 
me what I am to do — the evil is sufficient 
without that. I tell you I will preach. I 
would rather cut off my right hand, if that 
would do as well. I am speaking like a 
child or a fool : who cares for my right hand, 
I wonder, or my life, or my senses ? No 
more of this ; I will preach — don’t speak 
of it again. It will not matter a hundred 
years hence,” muttered the minister, with 
that sudden adoption of the philosophy of 
recklessness which misery sometimes plays 
with. He threw him|plf into his chair 
again, and covered his face with his hands. 
He was thinking of Salem, and all those 
rows of gazing eyes. He could see them 
all in their pews ; imagination, with a cruel 
freak like a mocking spirit, depicting all tRe 
finery of Mrs. Pigeon and Mrs. Brown upon 
that vivid canvas. The minister groaned at 
the thought of them ; but to put it down on 
paper, and record the pang of exasperation 
and intolerable wretchedness which was thus 
connected with the fine winter bonnets of the 
poulterer’s wife and the dairywoman would 
make a picture rather grotesque than terri- 
ble to unconcerned eyes. It was dreadful 
earnest to poor Vincent, thinking how he 
should stand before them on that inexorable 
Sunday, and preach ‘‘as if nothing had hap- 
pened ; ” reading all the while, in case his 
own mind would let him forget them, the 
vulgarest horrors of all that had happened 
in all that crowd of eyes. 

“ And you’ll find a great consolation, take 
my word, sir, in the thought that you’re 
a-doing of your duty,” said Tozer, shaking 
his head solemnly, as he rose to go away ; 
“ that’s a w'onderful consolation, Mr. Vin- 
cent, to all of us ; and specially to a minis- 
ter that knows he’s a-serving his Master and 
saving souls.” 

Heaven help him ! the words rang in his 
ears like mocking echoes long after the but- 
terman had settled into his arm-chair, and 
confided to his wife and Phoebe that the 
pastor was a-coming to himself and taking 
to his duties, and that we’ll tide it over yet. 
“ Saving souls-! ” the words came back and 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 237 


back to Vincent’s bewildered mmd. They 
formed a measure and cadence in their con- 
stant repetition, haunting him like some 
spiritual suggestion as he looked over, with 
senses confused and dizzy, his little stock of 
sermons to make preparation for the duty 
j which he could not escape. At last he tossed 
them all away in a heap, seized his pen, and 
poured forth his heart. Saving souls ! what 
did it mean ? He was not writing a ser- 
mon. Out of the depths of his troubled 
heart poured all the chaos of thought and 
wonder, which leapt into fiery life under that 
quickening touch of personal misery and 
unrest. He forgot the bounds of orthodox 
speculation — all bounds save those of that 
drear mortal curtain of death, on the other 
side of which that great question is solved. 
He set forth the dark secrets of life with 
exaggerated touches of his own passion and 
anguish. He painted out of his own aching 
fancy a soul innocent, yet stained with the 
heaviest of mortal crimes: he turned his 
wild light aside and poured it upon another, 
foul to the core, yet unassailable by man. 
i Saving souls ! — which was the criminal ? 

I which was the innocent ? A wild chaos of 
i sin and sorrow, of dreadful human compli- 
cations, misconceptions, of all incomprehen- 
sible, intolerable thoughts, surged round 
and round him as he wrote. Were the 
words folly that haunted him with such 
echoes ? Could he, and such as he, unwit- 
ting of half the mysteries of life, do any- 
! thing to that prodigious work.^ Could 
words help it? — vain syllables of exhorta- 
tion or appeal ? God knows. The end of 
i it all was a confused recognition of the One 
' half known, half identified, who, if any 
hope were to be had, held that hope in his 
hands. The preacher, who had but dim 
j acquaintance with that name, paused in the 
half idiocy of his awakened genius, to won- 
der, like a child, if perhaps his simple 
mother knew a little more of that far-off 
wondrous figure — recognized it wildly by the 
confused lights as the only hope in earth or 
heaven — and so rose up, trembling with ex- 
citement and exhaustion, to find that he had 
spent the entire night in this sudden inspi- 
ration, and that the wintry dawn, cold and 
piercing to the heart, was stealing over the 
opposite roofs, and another day had begun. 

That was the sermon which startled half 
the population of Carlingford on that won- 


derful Sunday. Salem had never been so 
full before. Every individual of the chap- 
el-folks was there who could by any means 
come out, and many other curious inhabi- 
tants full of natural wonder, to see how a 
man looked, and what he would preach 
about, whose sister was accused of murder. 
The wondering congregation thrilled like 
one soul under that touch of passion. Faces 
grew pale, long sobs of emotion burst here 
and there from the half-terrified, excited 
audience who seemed to see around them, 
instead of the every-day familiar world — a 
throng of those souls whom the preacher 
disrobed of everything but passion and con- 
sciousness and immortality. Just before the 
conclusion, when he came to a sudden 
pause all at once and made a movement 
forward, as if to lay hold of something he 
saw, the effect was almost greater than the 
deacons could approve of in chapel. One 
woman screamed aloud, another fainted, 
some people started to their feet — all waited 
with suspended breath for the next words, 
electrified by the real life which palpitated 
there before them, where life so seldom ap- 
pears, in the decorous pulpit. When he 
went on again the people were almost too 
much excited to perceive the plain meaning 
of his words, if any plain meaning had ever 
been in that passionate outcry of a wounded 
and bewildered soul. When the services 
were over, many of them watched the pre- 
cipitate rush which the young preacher 
made through the crowd into his vestry. 
He could not wait the dispersion of the 
flock, as was the usual custom. It was with 
a buzz of excitement that the congregation 
did disperse slowly, in groups, asking each 
other had such a sermon ever been preached 
before in Carlingford. Some shook their 
heads, audibly expressing their alarm lest 
Mr. Vincent should go too far, and unsettle 
his mind 5 some pitied and commented on 
his looks — women these. He sent them all 
away in a flutter of excitement, which oblit- 
erated all other objects of talk for the mo- 
ment, even his sister, and left himself in a 
gloomy splendor of eloquence and uncer- 
tainty, the only object of possible comment 
until the fumes of his wild oration should 
have died away. 

“ I said we’d tide it over,” said Tozer, in 
a triumphant whisper to his wife. • “ That’s 
what he can do when he’s well kep’ up to it, 


238 


SALEM CHAPEL, 


and put on his mettle. The man as says he 
ever heard anything as was finer, or had ^ 
more mind in it,” added the worthy butter- | 
man to his fellow-deacons, “ has had more | 
opportunities nor me ; and though I say it, j 
I’ve heard the best preachers in our con- | 
nection. That’s philosophical, that is — 
there aint a man in the church as I ever 
heard of as could match that, and not a 
many as comes out o’ ’Omerton. We’re 
not a-going to quarrel with a pastor as can 
preach a sermon like that, not because he’s { 
had a misfortune in his family. Come into ! 
the vestry. Pigeon, and say a kind word — 
as you’re sorry, and we’ll stand by him. He 
wants to be kep’ up, that’s what he wants, j 
Mind like that always does. It aint equal | 
to doing for itself, like most. Come along ; 
with me, and say what’s kind, and cheer i 
him up, as has exerted hisself and done his j 
best.” i 

“ It was rousing up,” said Pigeon, with a ! 
little reluctance ; “ even the misses didn’t | 
go again that ; but where he’s weak is in 
the application, I don’t mind just shaking 
hands ” 

“ If we was all to go, he might take it 
kind,” suggested Brown, the dairyman, who 
had little to say, and not much confidence 
in his own opinion ; and pride and kindness 
combined won the day. The deacons who I 
were in attendance went in, in a body, to 
shake hands with the pastor, and express 
their sympathy, and congratulate him on 
his sermon, the latter particular being an 
established point of deacon’s duty in every 
well-regulated and harmonious community. 
They went in rather pleased with themselves, 
and full of the gratification they were about 
to confer. But the open door of the vestry 
revealed an empty room, with the preacher’s 
black gown lying tossed upon the floor, as 
if it had been thrown down recklessly in his 
sudden exit. The little congratulating pro- 
cession came to a halt, and stared in each 
other’s faces. Their futile good intentions 
flashed into exasperation. They had come 
to bestow their favor upon him, to make 
him happy, and behold he had fled in con- 
temptuous haste, without waiting for their 
approval ; even Tozer felt the shock of the 
failure. So far as the oligarchs of Salem 
were concerned, the sermon might never 
have been preached, .and the pastor sunk 
deeper than ever into the bad opinion of 
Mr. Pigeon and Mr. Brown. 

In the mean time Vincent had rushed from 
his pulpit, thrown on his coat, and rushed 
out again into the cold midday, tingling in 


every limb with the desperate effort of self- 
restraint, which alone had enabled him to 
preserve the gravity of the pulpit, and con- 
clude the services with due steadiness and 
propriety. When he made that sudden 
pause, it was not for naught. Efiective 
though it was, it was no trick of oratory 
which caught the breath at his lips, and 
transfixed him for the moment. There, 
among the crowded pews of Salem, deep in 
the further end of the Chapel, half lost in the 
throng of listeners, suddenly, all at once, 
had flashed upon him a face — a face, un- 
changed from its old expression, intent as 
if no deluge had descended, no earthquake 
fallen ; listening, as of old, with gleaming 
keen eyes and close-shut emphatic mouth. 
The whole building reeled in Vincent’s eyes, 
as he caught sight of that thin head, dark 
and silent, gleaming out in all its expressive 
refinement and intelligence from the com- 
mon faces round. How he kept still and 
went on was to himself a kind of miracle. 
Had she moved or left the place, he could 
not have restrained himself. But she did 
not move. He watched her, even while he 
prayed, with a profanity of which he was 
conscious to the heart. He watched her 
with her frightful composure finding the 
hymn, standing up with the rest to sing. 
When she disappeared, he rushed from the 
pulpit — rushed out — pursued her. She was 
not to be seen anywhere when he got out- 
side, and the first stream of the throng of 
dispersing worshippers, which fortunately, 
however, included none of the leading peo- 
ple of Salem, beheld with amazed eyes the 
minister who darted through them, and took 
his hurried way to Back Grove Street. 
Could she have gone there ? He debated 
the question vainly with himself as he has- 
tened on the familiar road. The door was 
open as of old, the children playing upon 
the crowded pavement. He flew up the 
staircase, which creaked under his hasty 
foot, and knocked again at the well-known 
door, instinctively pausing before it, though 
he had meant to "burst in and satisfy himself. 
Such a violence was unnecessary — as if the 
world had stood still, Mrs. Ililyard opened 
the door and stood before him, with her lit- 
tle kerchief on her head, her fingers still 
marked with blue. “Mr. VinQent,” said 
this incomprehensible woman, admitting 
him without a moment’s hesitation, pointing 
him to a chair as of old, and regarding him 
with the old steady look of half-amused ob- 
servation, “ you have never come to see me 
on a Sunday before. It is the best day for 
conversation for people who have work to 
do. Sit down, take breath ; I have leisure, 
and there is time now for everything we can 
have to say.” 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


PART IX. — CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Vincent put out his hand to seize upon 
the strange woman who confronted him with 
a calmness much more confounding than any 
agitation. But her quick eye divined his 
purpose. She made the slightest movement 
aside, extended her own, and had shaken 
hands with him in his utter surprise before 
he knew what he was doing. The touch be- 
wildered his faculties, but did not move him 
from the impulse, which was too real to 
yield to anything. He took the door from 
her hand, closed it, placed himself against 
it. “You are my prisoner,” said Vincent. 
He could not say any more, but gazed at her 
with blank eyes of determination. He was 
no longer accessible to reason, pity, any 
sentiment but one. He had secured her. 
He forgot even to be amazed at her com- 
posure. She was his prisoner — that one fact 
was all he cared to know. 

“I have been your prisoner the entire 
morning,” said Mrs. Hilyard, with an at- 
tempt at her old manner, which scarcely 
could have deceived the minister had he pre- 
served his wits sufficiently to notice it, but 
at the same time betraying a little surprise, 
recognizing instinctively that here she had 
come face to face with those blind forces of 
nature upon which no arguments can tell. 
“ You were in much less doubt about your 
power of saving souls the last time I heard 
you, Mr. Vincent. Sit down, please. It is 
not long since we met, but many things have 
happened. It is kind of you to give me so 
early an opportunity of talking them over. 
I am sorry to see you look excited — but after 
such exertions, it is natural, I suppose ” 

“ You are my prisoner,” repeated Vincent, 
without taking any notice, of what she said. 
He was no match for her in any passage -of 
arms. Her words fell upon his ears without 
any meaning. Only a dull determination 
possessed him. He locked the door, while 
she, somewhat startled in her turn, stood 
looking on; then he went to the window, 
threw it open, and called to some one below 
—he did not care who. “ Fetch a policeman 
— quick — lose no time,” cried Vincent. Then 
he closed the window, turned round, and 
confronted her again. At last a little agita- 
tion was visible in this invulnerable woman. 
For an instant her head moved with a spas- 
modic thrill, and her countenance changed. 
She gave a rapid glance round as if to see 


239 

whether any outlet was left. Vincent’s eye 
followed hers. 

“ You cannot escape — you shall not es- 
cape,” he said, slowly ; “ don’t think it — 
nothing you can do or say will help you 
now.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Mrs. Hilyard, with a startled, 
panting breath. “You have come to the 
inexorable,” she said after a moment ; “ most 
men do, one time or another. You decline 
meeting us on our ground, and take to 
your own. Very well,” she continued, seat- 
ing herself by the table where she had al- 
ready laid down one of the Salem hymn- 
books ; “ till this arrival happens, we may 
have a little conversation, Mr. Vincent. I 
was about to tell you something which ought 
to be good news. Though you don’t appre- 
ciate my regard for you, I will tell it you all 
the same. What noisejs that? Oh, the 
boys, I suppose, rushing off for your police- 
man. I hope you know wdiat you are going 
to say to that functionary when he comes. 
In the mean time, wait a little — you must 
hear my news.” 

The only answer Vincent made was to look 
out again from the window, under which a 
little group of gazers had already collected. 
His companion heard the sounds below with 
a thrill of alarm more real than she had ever 
felt before. She sat rigidly, with her hand 
upon the hymn-book, preserving her com- 
posure by a wonderful effort, intensely alive 
and awake to everything, and calculating 
her chances with a certain desperation. This 
one thing alone of all that had happened, the 
Back Grove Street needlewoman, confidentv 
in her own powers and influence, had not 
foreseen. 

“ Listen ! ” she cried, with an excitement 
and haste which she could not quite conceal. 
“ That man is not dead, you know. Come 
here — shut the window ! Young man, do you 
hear what I say to you ? Am I likely to in- 
dulge in vain talk now ? -Come here — here ! 
and understand wliat I have to say.” 

“ It does not matter,” said Vincent, clos- 
ing the windovT. “ What you say can make 
no difference. There is but one thing pos- 
sible now.” 

“ Yes, you are a man ! ” cried the despe- 
rate woman, clasping her hands tight, and 
struggling with herself to keep down all ap- 
pearance of her anxiety. “ You are deaf, 
blind ! You have turned your back upon 


240 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


reason. That is what it always comes to. 
Hush ! come here — closer ; they make so 
much noise in the street. I believe,” she 
said, with a dreadful smile, “ you are afraid 
of me. You think I will stab you, or some- 
thing. Don’t entertain such vulgar imagina- 
tions, Mr. Vincent. I have told you before, 
you have fine manners though you are only 
a Dissenting minister. I have something to 
tell you— something you will be glad to 
know ” 

Here she made another pause for breath 
— merely for breath — not for any answer, 
for there was no answer in her companion’s 
face. He was listening for the footsteps in 
the street — the steps of his returning mes- 
sengers. And so was she, as she drew in 
that long breath, expanding her forlorn 
bosom with air, which the quick throbs of 
her heart so soon exhausted. She looked in 
his eyes with an eager fire in her own, stead- 
ily, without once shifting her gaze. The two 
had changed places. It was he, in his inex- 
orableness, close shut up against any appeal 
or argument, that was the superior now. 

“ When you hear what I have to say you 
will not be so calm,” she went on, with 
another involuntary heave of her breast. 
“ Listen ! your sister is safe. Yes, you may 
start, but whatT say is true. Don’t go to 
the window yet. Stop, hear me ! I tell you 
your sister is safe. Yes, it may be the peo- 
ple you have sent for. Never mind, this is 
more important. You have locked the door, 
and nobody can come in. I tell you again 
and again, your sister is safe. That man 
^s not dead — you know he is not dead. And 
yesterday — hush ! never mind ! — yesterday,” 
she said, rising up as Vincent moved, and 
detaining him with her hand upon his arm, 
which she clutched with desperate fingers, 
“ he made a declaration that it was not she ^ 
a declaration before the magistrates,” con- 
tinued Mrs. Hilyard, gasping as her strength 
failed her, and following him, holding his 
arm as he moved to the window, that it 
was not she — not she ! do you understand 
me — not she ! He swore to it. He said it 
was another, and not that girl. Do you 
hear me ? ” she cried, raising her voice, and 
shaking his arm wildly in the despair of the 
moment, but repeating her words with the 
clearness of desperation — “ He said on his 
oath it was not she.” 

She had followed him to the window, not 


( pleading for herself by a single word, but 
with her desperate hand upon his arm, her 
face pinched and pale to the lips, and a hor- 
rible anxiety gleaming in the eyes which she 
never removed from his face. The two stood 
together there for a moment in that silent 
encounter ; he looking down at the group of 
people below, she watching his face with her 
eyes, clutching his arm with her hand, ap- 
pealing to him with a speechless suspense 
and terror, which no words can describe. 
Her fate hung upon the merest thread, and 
she knew it. She had no more power to 
move him in her own person than any one 
of the ragged children who stood gazing up 
at the window. There he stood, silent, 
blank, immovable ; and she, sufiering no ex- 
pression of ^er dreadful suspense to escape 
her, stood clutching his arm, seeing, as she 
had never seen before, a pale vision of pris- 
ons, scaflfolds, judgments, obscuring earth 
and heaven. She was brave and had dared 
them all wittingly in the crisis of her fate, 
but the reality caught the laboring breath 
from her lips, and turned her heart sick. 
This morning she had woke with a great 
burden taken off her mind, and, daring as 
she was, had faced the only man who had 
any clue to her secret, confident in his gen- 
erous nature and her own power over him. 
But this confidence had failed her utterly, 
and in the very ease and relief of her mind 
— a relief more blessed and grateful than she 
would have acknowledged to any mortal — 
lo ! here arose before her, close and real, the 
spectre which she had defied. It approached 
step by step, while she gazed with wild eyes 
and panting breath upon the inexorable man 
who had it in his power to deliver her over 
to law and justice. She dared not say a 
word of entreaty to him ; she could only 
watch his eyes, those eyes which never 
lighted upon her, with speechless dread and 
anxiety. Many evils she had borne in her 
life — many she had confronted and overcome 
— obstinate will and unscrupulous resolu- 
tion had carried her oneway or other through 
all former dangers. Here for the first time 
she stood helpless, watching with an inde- : 
scribable agony the face of the young man 
at whom she had so often smiled. Some 
sudden, unforeseen touch might still set her 
free. Her breath came quick in short gasps 
— her breast heaved— her fate was absolutely 
beyoni her own control, in Vincent’s hands. 


CHRONICLEb OF CARLINGFORD. 241 


I Just then there came into the narrow | aS' 
' street a sound of carriage-wheels. Instinct- 
ively Vincent started. The blank of his 
determination w'as broken by this distant 
noise. Somehow it came naturally into 
; the silence of this room and woke up the 
I echoes of the past in his mind ; the past — 
that past in which Lady Western’s carriage 
was the celestial chariot, and she the divin- 
i est lady of life. Like a gleam' of light there 
' suddenly dawned around him a remembrance 
of the times he had seen her here — the times 
he had seen her anywhere ; the last time — 
the sweet hand she had laid upon his arm. 
Vincent’s heart awoke under that touch. 
With a start, he looked down upon the hand 
which was at this moment on his arm, — not 
, the hand of love, — fingers with the blood 
pressed down to the very tips, holding with 
desperation that arm which had the power 
of life and death. A hurried exclamation 
i came from his lips ; he looked at the woman 
; by him, and read vaguely in her face all the 
I passion and agony there. Vaguely it oc- 
I curred to him that to save or to sacrifice 
her w'as in his hands, and that he had but a 
moment now to decide. The carriage-wheels 
' came nearer, nearer, ringing delicious prom- 
ises in his ears — nearer, too, came the ser- 
' vants of that justice he had invoked ; and 
' what plea was it, what strange propitiation, 
which his companion had put forth to him 
I to stay his avenging hand? Only a mo- 
' ment now ; he shook her hand off his arm, 

I and in his turn took hold of hers ; he held 
! her fast while she faced him in an agony of 
! restrained suspense and terror. How her 
I worn bosom panted with the quick-coming 
j breath ! Her life was in his hands. 

“What was that you said? ’’asked Vin- 
I cent, with the haste and brevity of passion, 
j suddenly perceiving how much had to be 
j done in this moment of fate. 

! The long-restrained words burst from his 
companion’s lips almost before he had done 
speaking. “ I said your sister was safe ! ” 
she cried ; “ I said he had declared her in- 
i nocent on his oath. It W'as not she — he has 
sworn it, all a man could do. To sacrifice 
another,” she went on breathlessly with a 
strong momentary shudder, pausing to lis- 
ten, “ will do nothing for her — nothing ? 

I You hear what I say. It was not she ; he 
has sworn upon his solemn oath. Do as 
you will. She is safe — safe ! — as safe as — 
CHliONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


God help me — as safe as my child ; — 
and it was for her sake ” 

She stopped — words would serve her no 
further — and just then there came a sum- 
mons to the locked door. Vincent dropped 
her arm, and sheii recoiled from him with 
an involuntary movement; unawares she 
clasped her thin hands and gave one wild 
look into his face. N ot even now could she 
tell what he was going to do, this dreadful 
arbiter of fate. The key, as he turned it in 
the door, rang in her ears like thunder ; and 
his hand trembled as he set open the en- 
trance to the needlewoman’s mean apart- 
ment. On the threshold stood no' vulgar 
messenger of fate, but a bright vision, sad, 
yet sweeter than anything else in earth or 
almost in heaven to Vincent. He fell back 
without saying anything before the startled 
look of that beautiful face. He let in, not 
law and justice, but love and pity, to this 
miserable room. 

“ O Rachel ! where have you been ? have 
you seen him ? have you heard of him ? 
where have you been ? ” cried the visitor, 
going up to the pallid woman, whose eyes 
were still fixed on Vincent. Mrs. Hilyard 
could not speak. She dropped upon her 
knees by the table, shivering and crouching 
like a stricken creature. She leaned her 
head upon the hymn-book which lay there 
so strangely at variance with everything 
else around it. Pale with fright and horror. 
Lady Western appealed to Vincent. “ She 
is ill, she is fainting — O Mr. Vincent, what 
have you been saying to her ? She was not 
to blame,” cried the new-comer, in her igno- 
rance. Vincent attempted no reply, offered 
no help. In his heart he could have snatched 
away those beautiful hands which embraced 
and comforted his “ prisoner,” thus rescued 
out of his grasp. It was hard to see her 
touch that guilty, conscious woman whom 
his own heart refused to pity. He stood by, 
looking on, watching her still ; the instinct 
of vengeance had been awakened within him. 
He was reluctant to let her go. • 

“ You have been saying something to her,” 
said Lady Western, with tears in her eyes ; 
“ and how could she be to blame ? Rachel ! 
Oh, I wonder, I wonder if she loved him 
after all ? ” cried the beautiful creature, in 
the bewilderment of her innocence and igno- 
rance. She stood bending over the kneel- 
ing figure, troubled, perplexed almost more 


242 SALEM CHAPEL 


than her strange sister-in-law had ever yet 
perplexed her. She could not account for 
this extraordinary access of agitation. It 
was nohow explainable, except upon that 
supposition which opened at once the warm- 
est sympathies of the gentle young woman’s 
heart. 

“ Kachel, dear ! ” she cried, kissing softly 
the thin hands worn with toil that covered 
Mrs. Hilyard’s face — “he is still living, 
there is hope ; perhaps he will get better ; 
and he is showing a better mind too,” she 
added, after a little tremulous pause. “ I 
came to tell you ; he has sworn that it was 
not — O Mr. Vincent, I sent you word imme- 
diately when I got the message — he says it 
was not your sister ; she had nothing to do 
with it, he says. Now I can look you in the 
face again. The first thing he was able to 
do when he came to himself was to clear 
her ; and now she will get better- — and your 
dear mother?” — said Lady Western, look- 
ing wistfully into the young man’s face. In 
that moment, while her attention was di- 
rected otherwise, Mrs. Hilyard rose up and 
took her seat again ; took her seat because 
she was not able to stand, and scarcely able, 
by all the power of her will, to compose the 
nerves which, for the first time in her life, 
had utterly got the better of her. She 
wiped -off the heavy moisture from her face 
wdth a furtive hand before the young Dow- 
ager turned her eyes again that way. She 
grasped fast hold of the only thing on the 
table, the Salem hymn-book, and with a 
vast effort regained some degree of self- 
command. For that precious moment she 
was free from observation, for nothing in the 
world could have prevented Vincent from 
returning with his own fascinated eyes the 
look which Lady Western turned upon him. 
While the two looked at each other she was 
safe ; she collected her scattered forces in 
that invaluable instant. She was herself 
again when Lady Western looked round, 
somewhat nervous and embarrassed from 
the gaze of passion with which her look of 
deprecation and sympathy had been met.. 
If a slight shiver now and then thrilled over 
Mrs. Hilyard’s figure, it was as like to be 
cold as emotion. Otherwise, she sat with 
her arm resting on the table and her hand 
clenched upon the hymn-book, her thin lips 
clinging spasmodically to each other, and 
her face pallid, but to an uncritical observer 


scarcely changed from the gray and vigilant 
composure of her usual appearance. So 
many storms had passed over that counte- 
nance, that the momentary agony of horror 
and fright, from which she had scarcely yet 
emerged, did not tell as it would have done 
on a face less worn. Her voice was sharp 
and strained when she spoke, and she 
watched Vincent’s eye with a keenness of 
which he was vividly conscious; but Lady 
Western, who did not go deep into looks 
and meanings, found nothing very unusual 
in what she said. 

“ I think Mr. Vincent was doubtful of my 
information,” she said. “ I heard it this 
morning from Langridge, the groom, who 
once belonged to my family, you know, 
Alice ; and — and lets me know if anything 
more than usual happens,” she said, abruptly 
stopping to draw breath. “ Mr. Vincent 
was doubtful of me. Now this matter is 
cleared up, I dare say he will understand me 
when I say that I never could have allowed . 
things to go further. I am only a needle- 
woman, and live in Back Grove Street,” 
continued Mrs. Hilyard, recovering gradu- 
ally as she spoke ; “ but I have certain 
things still in my power. Mr. Vincent will 
understand what I mean,” she W'ent on, fix- 
ing her eyes upon him, and unable to re- 
press an occasional gasp wLich interrupted 
her words, “when I say that I should not 
have suffered it to go further. I should not 
have shrunk from any sacrifice. My dear, I 
have been a little shaken and agitated, as 
you perceive. Mr. Vincent w^ants to keep 
his eye upon me. Take me with you, 
Alice,” said the bold woman, once more 
looking Vincent full in the face ; “ take 
charge of me, keep me prisoner until all 
this is cleared up. I am about tired of liv- 
ing a disguised princess. Send up your 
people for my possessions here, and take me 
with you. You will find me safe, Mr. Vin- 
cent, when you happen to want me, with 
Lady Western in Grange Lane.” 

“ O Bachel, I am so glad ! ” cried Lady 
Western ; “ I cannot for my life imagine 
wdiat you mean by keeping you my prisoner, 
and all that ; hut Mr. Vincent may be very 
sure you will be safe with me ; — since he 
has so much interest in your movements,” 
continued the young Dowager, turning her 
perplexed eyes from one to the other. She 
had not the remotest idea what it all meant. 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 243 


She was perhaps a little surprised to per- 
ceive that, after all, Vincent’s interest was 
less with herself than with this strange 
woman, whose calmness and agitation were 
equally confusing and unintelligible. “ We 
[ shall of course always be happy to see Mr. 
j Vincent in Grange Lane,” she concluded, 
} with a somewhat stately courtesy. He did 
\ not look at her ; he w’as looking at the other, 
• whose eyes were fixed upon his face. Be- 
I tween these eyes Lady Western, much 
! amazed, could perceive a secret communica- 
tion passing. What could it mean ? The 
consciousness of this mystery between them, 
which she did not know, annoyed her, not- 
withstanding her sweet temper. She with- 
drew her hand instinctively from Mrs. Hil- 
yard’s, which she had taken in momentary 
enthusiasm, and watched their looks of in- 
telligence with half-ofiended eyes. 

“ Yes,” said the needlewoman, speaking 
with her eyes fixed upon Vincent, though she 
did not address him, and making a desperate 
efibrt after her usual manner ; “I do not 
think Back Grove Street will do any longer. 
One may as well take advantage of the acci- 
dent which has brought our family affairs 
before the world to come alive again. It is 
a thing one must do sooner or later. So, if 
your carriage is close, Alice, I will go home 
with you. I shall miss Salem,” said the au- 
dacious woman, “ though you are so much 
less sure about doing good than you used to 
be, Mr. Vincent. If my soul happens to be 
saved, however,” she continued, with a 
strange softening of her fixed and gleaming 
eyes — “ if that is of much importance, or 
has any merit in it — you will have had some 
share in the achievement. You will ? ” She 
said the words with a keen sharpness of in- 
terrogation, much unlike their more obvious 
meaning. “ You will,” she repeated again, 
more softly — “ you will ! ” Her thin hands 
came together for a moment in a clasp of 
mute supplication ; her eyes, always hith- 
erto looking dowm upon him from heights 
of dark knowledge and experience, looked 
up in his face with an anguish of entreaty 
which startled Vincent. Just at that mo- 
ment the sounds of the street grew louder, 
and a voice of authority was audible order- 
ing some one to clear the way. Mrs. Hil- 
yard did not speak, but she put out her hand 
and touched Lady Western’s shawl, lifting 
its long fringes, and twisting them round 


! those fingers on which the marks of her long 
, labor were still visible. She withdrew as 
I she did this her eyes from his face. Her fate 
was absolutely in his hands. 

“ Ladies,” said Vincent, hoarsely, after 
vainly trying to clear his agitated voice, 
“ it is better you should leave this place at 
once. I will see you to your carriage. If 
I do wrong the consequences will fall hard- 
est on me. Don’t say anything ; either way, 
talking will do little good. You are her 
shield and defence,” he said, looking at Lady 
Western, with an excitement which he could 
not quite keep under. “ When she touches 
you, she becomes sacred. You will keep 
her safe — safe ? you will not let her go ? ” 

“ Yes ; I will keep her safe,” said the 
beauty, opening her lovely, astonished eyes. 

“ Is she in danger ? O Mr. Vincent, your 
trouble has been too much for you ! remem- 
ber your sister is safe now.” 

“ Is she ? ” said the minister ; he was bit- 
ter in his heart, even though that hand was 
once more laid on his arm. Safe ! — with 
a broken heart and a ruined life ; but what 
does that matter ? It is all we are good for j 
though we may go mad and die.” 

“ Oh, not you ! not you ! ” said Lady 
Western, gazing at him with the tenderest 
pity in her sweet eyes. ** You must not say 
so ; I should be so unhappy.” Her beauti- 
ful hand pressed his arm with the lightest 
momentary pressure. She could not help 
herself; to see suffering and not to do what 
was in her to soothe it was not possible to 
her soft heart. Whatever harm that tern- • 
porary opiate might do, nothing in the world 
could have prevented her gentle kindness 
from administering it. She went down the 
humble stairs leaning on his arm, with 
Mrs. Hilyard following close. The young 
man put aside the little crowd he himself 
had collected, and put them in the carriage. 
He saw them drive away with a kind of 
despairing exaltation and excitement, and 
turned to the difficulties which remained to 
him — to explain himself and send the tardy 
ministers of justice away. He explained, as 
he best could, that he had been mistaken, 
and once more emptied his scanty purse, 
where there was now little enough left. 
When he had got rid of the disappointed 
group about the door, he went home slowly in 
the reaction of his violence and haste. Su- 
san was safe ; was she safe ? delivered from 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


244 

this dreadful accusation — allowed to drop 
back at least with her broken heart into the 
deep silences of privacy and uninvadable 
domestic life. Well, it was a mercy, a great 
mercy, though he could not realize it. He 
went home slowly, tingling with the strain 
of these strange hours ; was it Sunday still ? 
was it only an hour ago that Salem had 
thrilled to the discourse in which his passion 
and despair had found vent ? Vincent nei- 
ther comprehended himself nor the hours, 
full of strange fate, which were gliding over 
him. He went home exhausted, as if with 
a great conflict ; conscious of some relief in 
his heart, but half unwilling to confess to it, 
or to realize .the means by which it had 
dawned upon him. 

' CHAPTER XXIX. 

When Vincent entered the house, the 
sensation of quiet in it struck him with a 
vague consolation which he could scarcely 
explain. Perhaps only because it was Sun- 
day ; but there was no reproachful landlady, 
no distracting sound from above — all quiet, 
Sunday leisure, Sunday decorum, as of old. 
When he went up hurriedly to his former 
sitting-room, where Daly still had posses- 
sion, he found the man with a deprecating 
face, uneasily reading a Sunday newspaper, 
perched upon the edge of a chair. His reign 
was over — for to him, too, a message had come 
by the telegraph. Two letters for Vincent 
lay on the table — one a telegraphic despatch 
from Dover, the other a dainty little note, 

• which he opened as a man opens the first 
written communication he receives from the 
woman of all women. He knew what was 
in it ; but he read it as eagerly as if he ex- 
pected to And something new in the mild 
little epistle, with its gentle attempt at con- 
gratulation. The news was true. Either 
remorse had seized upon Mildmay in the 
prospect of death, or the lingering traditions 
of honor in his heart had asserted themselves 
on Susan’s behalf. He had declared her en- 
tirely innocent ; he had even gone farther, 
he had sworn that it was only as the com- 
panion of his daughter that Susan had ac- 
companied them, and as such that he had 
treated her. The deposition taken by the 
magistrates was sent to Vincent in an 
abridged form, but what it conveyed was 
clear beyond dispute. So far as the words 
of this apparently dying man could be re- 


ceived, Susan was spotless — without blood 
on her hand, or speck upon her good fame. 
The lesser and the greater guilt were both 
cleared from that young head which had not 
been strong enough to wait for this vindica- 
tion. Though he said. Thank God, from 
the botton of his heart, an unspeakable bit- 
terness filled Vincent’s soul as he read. 
Here was a deliverance, full, lavish, un- 
looked for ; but who could tell that the poor 
girl, crazed with misery, would ever be any 
the better for it ? who could tell whether this 
vindication might be of any further use than 
to lighten the cloud upon Susan’s grave ? 

With this thought in his mind, he went 
to the sick-room, where everything seemed 
quiet, not quite sure that his mother, ab- 
sorbed as she was in Susan’s present danger, 
could be able to realize the wonderful deliv- 
erance W’hich had come to them. But mat- 
ters were changed there as elsewhere. Be- 
tween the door and the bed on which Susan 
lay, a large folding-screen had been set up, 
and in the darkened space between this and 
the door sat Mrs. Vincent, with Dr. Rider 
and his wife on each side, evidently persuad- 
ing and arguing with her on some point 
which she was reluctant to yield to them. 
They were talking in whispers under their 
breath, and a certain air of stillness, of calm 
and repose, which Vincent could scarcely 
comprehend was in the hushed room. 

“ I assure you, on my word,” said Dr. 
Rider, lifting his eyes as Vincent opened the 
door, and beckoning him softly to come in, 
“ that this change is more than I dared hope 
for. The chances are she will w^ake up out 
of danger. Nothing can be done for her but 
to keep her perfectly quiet ; and my wife will 
watch, if you will rest ; — for our patient’s 
sake ! ” said the anxious doctor, still motion- 
ing Vincent forward, and appealing to him 
with his eyes. 

“ Mr. Vincent has something to tell you,” 
said the quick little woman, impetuous even 
in her whisper, who was Dr. Rider’s wife. 
“ He must not come and talk here. He 
might w'ake Ifer. Take him away. Ed- 
ward, take them both away. Mrs. Vincent, 
you must go and hear what he has to say.” 

“ O Arthur ! my dear boy,” cried his 
mother, looking up to him with moist eyes. 
“ It is I who have something to tell. My 
child is perhaps to get well, Arthur. Oh ! 
my own boy, after all, she is going to get 


CHROMCLES OF CARLINGFORD. 245 


better. We shall have Susan again. Hush ! 
doctor, please let me go back again ; some- 
thing stirred — I think something stirred; 
and perhaps she might want something, and 
the nurse would not observe. Tired ? — no, 
no ; I am not tired. I have always watched 
I them when they were ill, all their lives. 
I They never had any nurse in sickness but 

I their mother. Arthur, you know I am not 
I tired. O doctor, perhaps you would order 
ij something while he is here, for my son ; he 
^ has been agitated and anxious, and he is not 
5 so strong — not nearly so strong as I am ; 
f but, my dear,” said the widow, looking up 
^ in her son’s face with a wistful eagerness, 
!■ “when Susan gets better, all will be — 
f well.” 

; She said the last words with a trembling, 
I prolonged sigh. Poor mother, in that very 
r moment she had recalled almost for the first 
t time how far from well everything would be. 

Her face darkened over piteously as she 
* spoke. She rose up, stung into new energy 
; by this dreadful thought, which had been 
: hitherto mercifully obscured by Susan’s dan- 

i ger. “ Let me go back — don’t say anything. 
Nobody can watch my child but me,” said 
the heart-broken woman ; and once more 
she looked in her son’s face. She wanted to 
i read there what had happened — to ascertaio 
, from him, without any one else being the 
wiser, all the dreadful particulars which now, 
in the first relief of Susan’s recovery, had 
burst into sudden shape upon her sight. 
‘ “ Doctor, we will not detain you ; her brother 

and I will watch my child,” said Mrs. Vin- 
cent. The light forsook her eyes as she 
rose in that new and darker depth of anx- 
' iety ; her little figure tottered trying to stand 
as she held out her hand to her son. “ You 
and me — only you and me, Arthur — we must 
never leave her; though everybody is so 

kind ” said the minister’s mother, turn- 

I ing with her smile of martyrdom, though her 
eyes were blind and she could not see them, 

' to Dr. Rider and his wife. 

Vincent took his mother’s hands and put 
her tenderly back in her chair. “ I have 
good news, too,” he said ; “all will be well, 
mother dear. This man who has wrought 
us so much trouble is not dead. I told you, 
but you did not understand it ; and he de- 
clares that Susan ” 

“ Arthur ! ” cried Mrs. Vincent, with a 
sharp outcry of alarm and remonstrance. 


“ O God forgive me ! I will wake my child. 
Arthur! The doctor is very good,” added 
the widow, looking round upon them always 
with the instinct of conciliating Arthur’s 
friends; “ and so is Mrs. Rider; but every 
family has its pjyivate affairs,” she concluded, 
with a wistful, deprecating smile, all the 
time making signs to Arthur to stop him in 
his indiscreet revelations. “ My dear, you 
will tell me presently when we are alone.” 

“ Ah, mother,” said Vincent, with a sup- 
pressed groan, “ there is nothing private now 
in our family affairs. Hush ! listen — Susan 
is cleared ; he swears she had nothing to do 
with it ; he swears that she was his daugh- 
ter’s companion only. Mother ! Good 
heavens ! doctor, what has happened ? She 
looks as if she were dying. Mother ! What 
have I done ? I have killed her with my 
good news.” 

“ Hush, hush — she has fainted — all will 
come right ; let us get her away,” cried Dr. 
Rider under his breath. Between them the 
two young men carried her out of the room, 
which Mrs. Rider closed after them with a 
certain triumph. The widow was not in so 
deep a faint but the fresher air outside and 
the motion revived her. It was more a sud- 
den failing of her faculties in the height of 
emotion than actual insensibility. She made 
a feeble effort to resist and return into Su- 
san’s room. “ You will wake her,” said Dr. 
Rider in her ear ; and the poor mother sank 
back in their arms, fixing her wistful, misty 
eyes, in which everything swam,' upon her 
son. Her lips moved as she looked at him, 
though he could not hear her say a word 
but the expression in her face, half awakened 
only from the incomprehension of her swoon, 
was not to be mistaken or resisted. Vin- 
cent bent down over her, and repeated what 
he had said as he had carried her to another 
room. “ Susan is safe — Susan is innocent. 
It is all over ; mother, you understand me ? ” 
he said, repeating it again and again. Mrs. 
Vincent leaned back upon his shoulder with 
a yielding of all her fatigued frame and 
worn-out mind. She understood him, not 
with her understanding as yet, but with her 
heart which melted into unspeakable relief 
and comfort without knowing why. She 
closed her eyes in that wonderful conscious- 
ness of some great mercy that had happened 
to her ; the first time she had closed them 
voluntarily for many nights and days. When 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


246 

they laid her down on the bed which had 
been hurriedly prepared for her, her eyes 
were still closed, and tears stealing softly 
out under the lids. She could not break 
out into expressions of thankfulness — the 
joy went to her heart. 

Dr. Rider thought it judicious to leave 
her so, and retired from the bedside with 
Vincent, not without some anxious curiosity 
in his own mind to hear all “ the rights ” of 
the matter. Perhaps the hum of their voices, 
quietly though they spoke, aroused her from 
her trance of silent gratitude. When she 
called Arthur faintly, and when they both 
hurried to her, Mrs. Vincent was sitting up 
in bed wiping off the tears from her cheeks. 
“ Arthur, dear, said the widow, I am quite 
sure Dr. Rider will understand that what he 
has heard is in the strictest confidence ; for 
to be sure,” she continued, with a faint smile 
breaking over her wan face, “ nobody could 
have any doubt about my Susan. It only 
had to be set right — and I knew when my 
son came home he would set it right,” said 
Mrs. Vincent, looking full in Dr. Rider’s 
face. “ It has all happened because I had 
not my wits about me as I ought to have 
had, and was not used to act for myself; 
but when my son came back — Arthur, my 
own boy, it was all my fault, but I knew you 
would set it right — and as for my Susan, no- 
body could have any doubt ; and you will 
both forgive your poor mother. I don’t mind 
saying this before the doctor,” she repeated 
again, once more looking in his face ; “ be- 
cause he has seen us in all our trouble, and 
I am sure we may trust Dr. Rider ; but, my 
dear, you know our private affairs are not 
to be talked of before strangers — especially,” 
said the widow, with a long trembling sigh 
of relief and comfort, “ when God has been 
so good to us, and all is to be well.” 

The two young men looked at each other 
in silence with a certain awe. All the dread- 
ful interval which had passed between this 
Sunday afternoon and the day of Susan’s 
return, had been a blank to Mrs. Vincent so 
far as the outer world was concerned. Her 
daughter’s illness and danger had rapt her 
altogether out of ordinary life. She took 
up her burden only where it had dropped off 
from her in the consuming anxiety for 
Susan’s life and reason, in which all other 
fears had been lost. Just at the point where 
she had forgotten it, where she had still 


faced the world with the despairing assump- 
tion that all would be right whep Arthur re- 
turned, she bethought herself 'now of that 
frightful shadow which had never been re- 
vealed in its full horror to her ^es. Noyr 
that Arthur’s assurance relieved her heart 
of that, the widow took up her old position 
instinctively. She knew nothing ck the com- 
ments in the newspapers, the vulgar public- 
ity to which poor Susan’s story Had come. 
SJie wanted to impress upon Dr. Rider’s 
mind, by way of making up for her son’s 
imprudence, that he was specially trusted, 
and that she did not mind speaking before 
him because he had seen all their trouble. 
Such was the poor mother’s idea as she sat 
upon the bed where they had carried her, 
wiping the tears of joy from her wan and 
worn face. She forgot all the weary days 
that had come and gone. She took up the 
story just at the point where she, after , all 
her martyrdom and strenuous upholding* of 
Arthur’s cause, had suddenly, sunk into 
Susan’s sick-room and left it. Now she re- 
appeared with Arthur’s banner once more' in 
her hands — always strong in that assurhp- 
tion that nobpdy could doubt as to Susan, 
and that Arthur had but to come home to 
set all right. Dr. Rider held up his warn- 
jng finger when he saw Vincent about to 
speak. This delusion was salvation to the 
widow. 

“ But I must go back to Susan, doctor,” 
said Mrs. Vincent. “If she should wake 
and find a stranger there! — though Mrs. 
Rider is so kind. But I am much stronger 
than I look — watching never does me any 
harm ; and now that my mind is easy — peo- 
ple don’t require much sleep at my time of 
life. And, Arthur, when my dear child sees 
me, she will know that all is well — all is 
well,” repeated the widow, with trembling 
lips. “ I must go to Susan, doctor j think 
if she should wake ! ” 

• “ But she must not wake,” said Dr. Rider, 
“ and if you stay quietly here she will not 
wake, for my wife will keep everything 
still. You will have a great deal to do for 
her when she is awake and conscious. Now 
you must rest.” 

“ I shall have a great deal to do for her ? 
Dr. Rider means she will want nursing, 
Arthur,” said Mrs. Vincent, “ after such an 
illness ; but she might miss me even in her 
sleep, or she might ” 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 247 


“ Mother, you must rest for Susan’s sake ; 
if you make yourself ill, who will be able to 
I take care of her ? ” said Vincent, who felt 
‘ her hand tremble in his, and saw with how 
; much difficulty she sustained the nervous 
shivering of her frame. She looked up into 
t his face wdth those anxious eyes which 
! strove to read his without being able to 
comprehend all the meanings there. Then 
' the widow turned with a feminine artifice to 
( Dr. Rider. 

“ Doctor, if you will bring me word that 
my child is still asleep — if you will tell me 
: exactly what you think, and that she is go- 
1 ing on well,” said Mrs. Vincent ; “ you are 
' always so kind. O Arthur, my dear boy,” 
cried the widow, taking his hand and caress- 
ing it between her own, now that he is 
gone, tell me. Is it quite true ?— is all well 
again ? but you must never bring in Susan’s 
name. Nobody must have it in their power 
to say a word about your sister, Arthur, 
ear. And, oh, I hope you have been pru- 
ent and not said anything among your peo- 
ple. Hush ! he will be coming back ; is it 
quite true, Arthur ? Tell me that my dear 
child has come safe out of it all, and nothing 
lias happened. Tell me ! Oh, speak to me, 
Arthur, dear ! ” 

** It is quite true,” said Vincent, meeting 
his mother’s eyes with a strange blending of 
pity and thankfulness. He did not say 
enough to satisfy her. She drew him closer, 
looking wistfully into his face. The winter 
afternoon was darkening, the room was cold, 
the atmosphere dreary. The widow held 
her son close, and fixed upon him her anx- 
ious, inquiring eyes. “ It is quite true, Ar- 
thur ! There is nothing behind that you are 
hiding from me ? ” she said, with her lips 
almost touching his cheek, and her wistful 
eyes searching his meaning. “ O my dear 
boy, don’t hide anything from me. I am 
able to bear it, Arthur. Whatever it is, I 
ought to know.” 

“ What I have told you is the simple truth, 
mother,” said Vincent, not without a pang. 
“ He has made a declaration before the 
magistrates ” 

Mrs. Vincent started so much that the 
bed on which she sat shook. “ Before the 
magistrates ! ” she said, with a faint cry. 
Then after a pause — “ But, thank God, it is 
not here, Arthur, nor at Lonsdale, nor any- 
where where we are known. And he said 


that — that — he had never harmed my child ? 

0 Arthur, Arthur — your sister ! — that she 
should ever be spoken of so ! And he was 
not killed? I do not understand it, my 
dear. I cannot see all the rights of it ; but 
it is a great comfort to have you to myself 
for a moment, and to feel as if perhaps 
things might come right again. Hush! I 
think the doctor must be coming. Speak 
very low. My dear boy, you don’t mean it, 
but you are imprudent ; and, O Arthur, with 
a troublesome flock like yours you must not 
commit yourself! You must not let your 
sister’s name be talked of among the people. 
Hush, hush, I hear the doctor at the door.” 

And the widow put her son away from 
her, and leaned her head upon her hands in- 
stead of upon his shoulder. She would not 
even let the doctor suppose that she had 
seized that moment to inquire further, or 
that she w'as anything but sure and confi- 
dent that all was going well. 

“ She is in the most beautiful sleep,” said 
the enthusiastic doctor, “ and Nettie is by 
her. Now, Mrs. Vincent, here is something 
you must take ; and when you wake up again 

1 will take you to your daughter, and I have 
very little doubt you will find her on the 
fair way for recovery — recovery in every 
sense,” added Dr. Rider, incautiously ; 
“ twice saved — and I hope you will have no 
more of such uneasiness as you have suf- 
fered on her behalf.” 

“ Indeed, I have had very little uneasiness 
with my children,” said Mrs. Vincent, draw- 
ing up her little figure on the bed. “ Susan 
never had a severe illness before. When 
she came here first she was sufiering from a 
— a bad fright, doctor. I told you so at the 
time ; and I was so weak and so alarmed, Ar- 
thur, dear, that I fear Dr. Rider has misun- 
derstood me. When one is not much used 
to illness,” said the mother, with her pathetic 
Jesuitry, “ one thinks there never was any- 
thing so bad as one’s own case, and I was 
foolish and upset. Yes, I will take it, doc- 
tor. Now that I am easy in my mind, I will 
take anything you please; and you will let 
me know if she wakes, or if she stirs. 
Whatever happens, you will let me know 
that moment ? Arthur, you will see that 
they let me know ? ” 

The doctor promised, anxiously putting 
the draught into her hands : he would have 
promised any impossible thing at the mo- 


248 SALEM CHAPEL. 


ment, so eager was he to get her persuaded 
to rest. 

“ I have not talked so much for— I wonder 
how long it is?” said the widow, with a 
faint smile. “ O Arthur, dear, I feel as if 
somehow a millstone had 'been on my heart, 
and God had taken it off. Doctor, it is — it 
is — all your doing, under Providence,” said 
the little woman, looking full in his face. 
Perhaps she believed it — at least she meant 
him to believe so. She swallowed the 
draught he gave her with that smile upon 
her face, and laid down her throbbing head 
in the quietness and darkness. “ Go with 
the doctor, Arthur, dear,” she said, denying 
the yearning in her heart to question her 
son farther, lest Dr. Rider might perhaps 
suppose all was not so well as she said; 
“ and, oh, be sure to tell me the very mo- 
ment that Susan wakes ! ” She watched 
them gliding noiselessly out of the room, 
two dark figures in the darkness. She lay 
down alone, throbbing all over with thrills 
of pain, w'hich were half pleasure. She be- 
gan to be conscious again of her own body 
and life ; and the wistful curiosity that pos- 
sessed' her was not strong enough to neutra- 
lize the positive unmistakable joy^ Susan 
was recovering. Susan was innocent. What 
trouble could there be heavy enough to take 
away the comfort out of words like these ! 

“ Now she will sleep. Mr. Vincent, I 
congratulate you on having such pure bipod 
in your veins ; not robust, you know, but 
far better — such sweet, perfect health as one 
rarely meets with now-a-days,” said the doc- 
tor, under his breath, with professional en- 
thusiasm ; “ all the better for your sister 
that she came of such a stock. ^ My wife, 
now, is another example — not robust, as I 
say — natures delicately organized, but in 
such exquisite adjustment, and with such 
elasticity! Mrs. Vincent will go to sleep 
like a baby, and Avake able for — anything 
that God may please to send her,” said Dr. 
Rider, with reverence. “ They will both 
sleep till to-morrow if all goes well. Hush ! 
— Well, I may be absurd, for neither of 
them could hear us here ; but still it is best 
to err on the safe side.” 

“ But Susan — ymu are not deceiving us — 

Susan is ” said Vincent, with sudden 

alarm. 

“ She is asleep,” said Dr. Rider ; “ and. 


if I can, I will remain till she wakes ; it is 
life or death.” 

They parted thus — the doctor to the little 
room below-stairs, where Vincent’s dinner 
awaited him, and the young minister him- 
self to his own room, where he went into 
the darkness with kind of bewildered un- 
certainty and incomprehension of the events 
about him. To think that this day, with all 
its strange encounters and unexpected inci- 
dents, was Sunday, as he suddenly remem- 
bered it to be — that this morning he had 
prej^ched, and this evening had to preach 
again, completed in Vincent’s mind the utter 
chaos and disturbance of ordinary life. It 
struck him dumb to remember that by and 
by he must again ascend the pulpit, and go 
through all his duties. Was he an impos- 
tor, doing all this mechanically ? He de- 
bated the question dully in his own mind, as 
he sat too much bewildered to do anything 
else in the dark in his bed-chamber, ponder- 
ing with a certain confused gravity and con- 
solation over all that had happened. But 
faculties, which are confused by sudden 
comfort and relief, are very different from 
faculties obscured and confounded by suffer- 
ing. He sat vaguely in the dark, wondering 
over his strange position. This morning, 
even in the height of his despair, he had at 
least some idea what he was going to do in 
that pulpit of Salem. It was a sacrifice — a 
martyrdom to accomplish — a wild outcry and 
complaint to pour forth to the world. This 
evening he sat wasting the precious mo- 
ments in the soft darkness, without knowing 
a word of what he was to say — without 
being able to realize the fact, that by and 
by he should have to go out through the 
sharp air echoing with church-bells — to see 
once more all those watchful faces turned 
upon him, and to communicate such instruc- 
tion as was in him to his flock. A sense of 
exhaustion and satisfaction was in Vincent’s 
heart. He sat listless in a vague comfort 
and weariness, his head throbbing with the 
fumes of his past excitement, yet not aching. 
It was only now that he realized the rolling 
off from his head of this dark cloud of hor- 
ror and shame. Susan was recovering — 
Susan w'as innocent. He became aware of 
the facts much in the same way as his mother 
became aware of them ere she dropped to 
sleep in the blessed darkness of the adjoin-' 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 249 


ing room. Confused as he was, with his 
brain still full of the pulsations of the past, 
he was so far conscious of what had hap- 
pened. He sat in his reverie, regardless of 
the time, and everything else that he ought 
to have attended to. The little maid came 
and knocked at his door to say his dinner had 
been waiting for an hour, and he answered, 
“ Yes ; he was coming,” but sat ^till in the 
darkness. Then the landlady herself, com- 
punctious, beginning to feel the thrills of 
returning, comfort which had entered her 
house, came tapping softly to say it was near 
six, and wouldn’t Mr. Vincent take some- 
thing before it was time for chapel ? Mr. 
Vincent said “ Yes ” again, but did not 
move ; and it was only when he heard the 
church-bells tingling into the night air that 
he got up at last, and, stealing first to the 
door of Susan’s room, where he ascertained 
that she still slept, and then to his mother’s, 
where he could hear her soft, regular breath- 
ing in the darkness, he went away in an in- 
describably exalted condition of mind to 
Salem and his duty. There is a kind of 
weakness incident to excitement.of mind and 
neglect of body, which is akin’ to the ecstatic 
state in which men dream dreams and see 
visions. Vincent was in that condition to- 
• night. He was not careful what anybody 
would say or think ; he no longer pictured 
to himself the upturned faces in Salem, all 
conscious of the tragedy which was con- 
nected with his name. The sense of deliv- 
erance in his heart emancipated him, and 
^ gave a contrary impulse to his thoughts. In 
the weakness of an excited and exhausted 
frame, a certain gleam of the ineffable and 
miraculous came over the young man. He 
was again in the world where God stoops 
down to change with one touch of his finger 
the whole current of man’s life — the world 
of childhood, of genius, of faith j that other 
world, dark sphere of necessity and fate, 
where nothing could stay the development 
into dread immortality of the obstinate hu- 
man intelligence, and where dreary echoes 
of speculation still questioned whether any 
change were possible in heart and spirit, or 
if saving souls were a mere figure of speech, 
floated away far off over his head, a dark 
fiction of despair. In this state of mind he 
went back to the pulpit where, in the morn- 
ing, he had thrilled his audience with all 
those wild complications of thought which 


end in nothing. Salem was again crowded 
—not a corner of the chapel remained un- 
filled ; and again many of the more zealous 
members were driven out of their seats by 
the influx of the crowd. Vincent, who had 
no sermon to preach, and nothing except 
the fulness that was in his heart to say, took 
up again his subject of the morning. He 
told his audience with the unpremeditated 
skill of a natural orator, that while Reason 
considered all the desperate chances, and 
concluded that wonderful work impossible, 
God, with the lifting of his couhtenance, 
with the touch of his power, made the dark- 
ness light before him, and changed the very 
earth and heavens around the wopdering 
soul. Lifted out of the region of reasona- 
bleness himself, he explained to his aston- 
ished audience how Rea^n halts in her con- 
clusions, how miracle and wonder are of all 
occurrences the most natural, and how, be- 
tween God and man, there are no bounda- 
ries of possibility. It was a strange sermon, 
without any text or divisions, irregular in 
its form, sometimes broken in its utterance ; 
but the man who spoke was in a “ rapture ” 
— a state of fasting and ecstasy. He saw 
indistinctly that there were glistening eyes 
in the crowd, and felt what was somewhat 
an unusual consciousness — that his heart 
had made communications to other hearts in 
his audience almost without his knowing it ; 
but he did not observe that nobody came to 
the vestry to congratulate him, that Tozer 
looked disturbed, and that the deacons 
averted their benign conntenances. "When 
he had done his work, he went home without 
waiting to talk to anybody — without, indeed, 
thinking any more of Salem — through the 
crowd, in the darkness, passing group after 
group in earnest discussion of the minister. 
He went back still in that exalted condition 
of mind, unaware that he passed Mrs. Tozer 
and Phoebe, who were much disposed to join 
him — and was in his own house sooner than 
most of his congregation. All within was 
quiet, lost in the most grateful and profound 
stillness. Sleep seemed to brood over the 
delivered house. Vincent spoke to the doc- 
tor who still waited, and whose hopes were 
rising higher and higher, and then ate some- 
thing, and said his prayers, and went to rest 
like a child. The family, so worn out with 
labor and trial and sorrow, slept profoundly 
under the quiet stars. Those hard heavens 


250 SALEM CHAPEL. 


from which an indifferent God saw the Inno- 
cents murdered and made no sign, had 
melted into the sweet natural firmament, 
above which the great Father watches un- 
wearied. The sudden change was more than 
mere deliverance to the young Nonconfor- 
mist. He slept and took rest in the sweet 
surprise and thankfulness of his soul. His 
life and heart, still young and incapable of 
despair, had got back out of hard anguishes 
and miseries which no one could soften, to 
the sweet miraculous world in which cir- 
cumstances are always changing, and God 
interferes forever, 

CHAPTER XXX. 

When Vincent awoke next morning, his 
mother was standing by his bedside. Her 
eyes were dewy and moist, a faint tinge of 
color was on her sweet old cheek, and her 
steps tottered a little as she came up to his 
bed and stooped to kiss him. “ 0 Arthur, 
my dear boy, she knows me ! ” said Mrs. 
Vincent, putting up her hand to her eyes. 
“ I must not be away from her a moment, 
but I could not resist coming to tell you. 
She knows me, dear. Make haste and dress, 
and come and see your sister, Arthur ; and 
I will give orders about your breakfast as I 
go back. My dear, I know you have been 
anxious,” said the widow, putting back his 
hair fondly with the soft little hand which 
still trembled ; “ though men have not the 
way of showing it, I know you have been 
very anxious. You looked quite pale and 
thin as you slept. But I must speak to the 
landlady now and see about your food. 
Come to Susan’s room as soon as you are 
dressed, and I will order your breakfast, my 
dear boy,” said his mother, going softly out 
again, with her tender little figure all beau- 
tified, and trembling with joy. Mrs. Vin- 
cent met the landlady near the door, and 
stopped to speak to her. “ My daughter is 
a great deal better,” said the minister’s 
mother. “ I have been so anxious, I have 
never been able to thank you as I ought 
to have done for your kindness and atten- 
tion. We have been as quiet as if we had 
been at home. We will all remember your 
attention, though I have never been able to 
thank you before ; and I am sure it is very 
gratifying to my son to think it is one of his 
own flock who has taken so much pains for 
us. Mr. Vincent has been very anxious 


about his sister,” continued the widow ; “ I 
fear he has not been taking his food, nor 
keeping his regular time for meals. You 
would oblige me very much if you ■would 
try to have something nice for his break- 
fast. We were all much shaken yesterday, 
being so anxious ; — some new-laid eggs per- 
haps — though I know they are scarce in a 
town at tl^s time of the year — or anything 
you can think of that will tempt him to eat. 
I would not say so much,” said Mrs. Vin- 
cent, smiling upon the astonished. landlady, 
and leaning to support her own weakness on 
the rail of the passage upon which the stair- 
case opened, “ but that I know your kind 
interest in your minister. I am sure you 
will take all the pains you can to get him to 
attend to his precious health. Thank you. 
I am very much obliged.” 

With this the little woman passed on, 
feeling indeed too weak to stand longer ; 
and leaving the landlady, who had intended 
to mingle some statement of her own griev- 
ances with her congratulations, with the plea 
quietly taken out of her hands, and the 
entire matter disposed of. Mrs. Vincent 
was moving back again to the sick-room 
when the door opened down-stairs, and 
some one asked for Mr. Vincent, and came 
up hurriedly. The minister’s mother recog- 
nized Tozer’s voice, and made a pause. She 
was glad of the opportunity to make sure 
that all was well in the flock. She leant 
over the railing to shake hands with the 
butterman, moved to a little effusion of 
thankfulness by the recollection of the state 
of anxiety she was in when she saw him 
last. 

“ My son is not up yet,” she said. “ We 
were very anxious yesterday. Jt was the 
crisis of the fever, and everything depended 
upon it. I dare say you would see how 
anxious Mr. Vincent was ; but thank Heaven 
now all is going on well.” 

“ You see, ma’am,” said Tozer, “ it must 
have all been on the nerves, and to be sure 
there aint nothing more likely to be ser- 
viceable than good news. It’s in the paper 
this morning. As soon as I see it, 1 said to 
my missis, ‘ This is why the minister was so 
pecooliar yesterday.’ I divined it in a mo- 
ment, ma’am ; though it wasn’t to say pru- 
dent, Mrs. Vincent, and not as you would 
have advised no more nor myself, to fly off 
like that out of chapel, without as much as 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


shalving hands with one o’ the deacons. But 
I make allowances, I do ; and when I see it 
in the paper, I said to my missis, ‘ It’s all 
along o’ this Mr. Vincent was so queer.’ I 
don’t doubt as it’ll be quite looked over, and 
thought no more of, when it’s known what’s 
the news.” 

I “ What news ? ” said Mrs. Vincent, faintly, 
I holding fast by the railing. “ You mean the 
I news of my dear child’s recovery,” she added, 
I' after a breathless pause. “ Have they put 
i it in the papers ? lam sure it is very good, 
s but I never heard of such a thing before. 
I She has been very ill to be sure — but most 
I people are very ill once in their lives,” said 
1 the widow, gasping a little for breath, and 
: fixing her eyes upon the paper which Tozer 
held in his hand. 

“ Poor soul ! ” said the deacon, compas- 
j sionately, “ it aint no wonder, considering 
i all things. Phoebe would have come the 

< very first day to say, Could she be of any 
use ? but her mother wasn’t agreeable. 

< Women has their own ways of managing ; 
! but they’ll both come to-day, now all’s cleared 
I up, if you’ll excuse me. And now, ma’am, 

' I’ll go on to the minister and see if there’s 
I anything as he’d like me to do, for Pigeon 
I and the rest was put out, there’s no denying 
^ of it ; but if things is set straight directly, 
j what with this news, and what with them 
i sermons yesterday, I don’t think as it’ll do 
5 no harm. I said to him, as this Sunday was 
5 half the battle,” said the worthy butterman, 
j reflectively; “ and he did his best — I wouldn’t 

say as he didn’t do his best ; and Pm not the 
man as will forsake my pastor when he’s in 
trouble. Good-morning, ma’am ; ^ and my 
best respects to miss, and I hope as she’ll 
soon be well, again. There aint no man as 
I could rejoice more nor me at this news.” 

Tozer went on to Vincent’s room, at the 
1 door of which the minister had appeared sum- 
I moiling him with some impatience and anxiety 
I — “ News ? what news ? ” said Mrs. Vincent 
I faintly to herself, as she held by the rail and 
’ felt the light forsaking her eyes in a new 
I mist of sudden dread. She caught the look 
! of the landlady at that moment, a look of 
, half pity, curiosity, and knowledge, which 
startled her back to her defences. With 
sudden firmness she gathered herself to- 
gether, and went on to the sick-room, leav- 
I;' ing behind her, as she closed the door, the 
i whole troubled world, which seemed to know 


251 

better about her most intimate affairs than 
she did ; and those newspapers which some- 
how mentioned Susan’s name, that sweet 
maiden name which it was desecration to see 
so much as named iii print. Rather, the 
widow carried that uneasy world in with her 
to the sick-room which she had left a few 
minutes before in all the effusion of un- 
hoped-for joy. ^Everything still was not well 
though Susan was getting better. She sat 
down by the bedside where Susan lay lan- 
guid and pale, showing the change in her by 
little more than quietness and a faint recog- 
nition of her mother, and in her troubled 
heart began to look the new state of affairs 
in the face, and to make up her mind that 
more of the causes of Susan’s illness than 
she had supposed known, must have become 
public. And then Arthur and his flock, that 
flock which he evidently had somehow af- 
fronted on the previous day. Mrs. Vincent 
pondered with all the natural distrust of a 
woman over Arthur’s imprudence. She al- 
most chafed at her necessary confinement by 
her daughter’s bedside ; if she herself, who 
had been a minister’s wife for thirty years 
and knew the ways of a congregation, and 
how it must be managed, could only get 
into the field to bring her son out of the dif- 
ficult passages which she had no faith in his 
own power to steer through ! So the poor 
mother experienced how, when absorbing 
grief is removed, a host of complicated anx- 
ieties hasten in to fill up its place. She was 
no longer bowed down under an overwhelm- 
ing dread, but she was consumed by restless 
desires to be doing, cravings to know all, 
fears for what might at the moment be hap- 
pening out of her range and influence. What 
might Arthur, always incautious, be confid- 
ing to Tozer even now — perhaps telling him 
those “ private affairs ” which the widow 
would have defended against exposure w-ith 
her very life — perhaps chaffing at Salem and 
rejecting that yoke which, being a minister, 
he must bear. It was all Mrs. Vincent could 
do to keep herself still on her chair, and to 
maintain that quietness which was necessary 
for Susan. If only she could have been 
there to soften his impatience and make the 
best of his unnecessary confidences ! Many 
a time before this, the widow had been com- 
pelled to submit to that female tribulation — 
to be shut up apart, and leave the great 
events outside to be transacted by these in- 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


252 

cautious masculine hands, in which, at the 
bottom of her heart, a woman seldom has 
perfect confidence when her own supervising 
influence is withdrawn. Mrs. Vincent felt 
instinctively that Arthur would commit him- 
self as she sat resigned but troubled by 
Susan’s bed. 

Tozer went directly to the door of Vin- 
cent’s room, where the minister, only half 
dressed, but much alarmed to see the col- 
loquy which was going on between his 
mother and the butterman, was waiting for 
him. The deacon squeezed the young man’s 
hand with a hearty pressure. His aspect 
was so fatherly and confidential, that it 
brought back to the mind of the young Non- 
conformist a certain rueful, half-comic recol- 
lection of the suppers in the back parlor, 
and all the old troubles of the pastor of 
Salem, which heavier shadows had driven 
out of his mind. Tozer held up triumphantly 
the paper in his hand. 

“ You’ve seen it, sir ? ” said the butter- 
man 5 “ first thing I did this morning was 
to look up whether there wasn’t nothing 
about it in the latest intelligence ; for the 
Gazette has been very particular, knowing, 
at Carlingford, folks would be interested — 
and here it is sure enough, Mr. Vincent; 
and we nigh gave three cheers, me and the 
lads in the shop.” 

To this Vincent listened with a darkening 
brow and an impatience which he did not 
attempt to conceal. He took the paper with 
again that quick sense of the intolerable 
which prompted him to tear the innocent 
broadsheet in pieces and tread it under foot. 
The Gazette contained, with a heading in 
large characters, the following paragraph : — 

“The Dover Tragedy. 

“ Our readers will be glad to hear that 
the unfortunate young lady, closely con- 
nected with a reverend gentleman well- 
known in Carlingford, whose name has been 
so unhappily mixed up in this mysterious 
affair, is likely to be fully exonerated from 
the charge rashly brought against her. In 
the deposition of the wounded man, which 
was taken late on Saturday night, by Mr. 
Everett, the stipendiary magistrate of Dover, 
he distinctly declares that Miss Vincent was 
not the party who fired the pistol, nor in 
any way connected with it — that she had ac- 
companied his daughter merely as compan- 
ion on a hasty journey, and that, in short, 
instead of the romantic connection supposed 


to subsist between the parties, with all the 
passions of love and revenge naturally in- 
volved, the ties between them were of the 
simplest and most temporary character. 
We are grieved to add, that the fright and 
horror of her awful position had overpowered 
Miss Vincent immediately on her arrival 
here, and brought on a brain fever, which, 
of course, made the unfortunate young lady, 
who is understood to possess great personal 
attractions, quite unable to explain the sus- 
picious circumstances surrounding her. We 
have now only to congratulate her respecta- 
ble family on her exoneration from a very 
shocking charge, and hope her innocence 
will soon be confirmed by full legal acquittal. 
Our readers will find Colonel Mildmay’s de- 
position on another page. It will be per- 
ceived that he obstinately refuses to indicate 
who was the real perpetrator of the deed. 
Suspicion has been directed to his groom, 
who accompanied him, in whom, however, 
the wounded man seems to repose perfect 
confidence. He is still in a very precarious 
state, and great doubts are entertained of his 
ultimate recovery.” 

“ There, Mr. Vincent, that’s gratifying — 
that is,” said Tozer, as Vincent laid down 
the paper ; “ and I come over directly I see 
it to let you know. Ee^s not gone yet ? ” 
added the butterman, inquiringly, pointing 
his thumb over his shoulder in the direction 
of the room where Daly still held possession. 
“ Nor w'ont go, neither, till it’s settled some- 
how. She’s cleared, but she. aint out o’ the 
hands of the law. I’ve had some experience 
in them sort of affairs ; and what I come to 
advise special, Mr. Vincent, was that you 
and me should go off to Mr. Brown in the 
High Street, or to Mr. Beke as is our magis- 
trate here, and put in bail. They’ll take 
bail for her appearance, now ; and us as is 
two responsible parties they can’t go again’ 
taking you and me; and we’ll have the 
police out o’ -the house and all things square,” 
said the w'orthy deacon, “ afore Mrs. Vin- 
cent gets movin’ about again, or the young 
lady knows what's agoing on ; that’s what 
I’d do without delay, Mr. Vincent, if I was 
you.” 

Vincent grasped the exultant butterman’s 
hand in an overflow of gratitude and com- 
punction. “ I shall never forget your kind- 
ness,” he said, with a little tremor in his 
voice. “ You have been a true friend. 
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. 
Let us go at once, and do what you say.” 

“ I never was the man to forsake my pas- 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 253 


tor in trouble — not to say a young man like 
you as is a credit to the connection, and the 
best preacher I may say as I ever have heard 
in Salem,” said Tozer, with effusion, return- 
ing the grasp ; “ but we aint agoing a step 
till you’ve had your breakfast. Your good 
mother, Mrs. Vincent, as is a real lady, sir, 
and would never advise you different from 
what I would myself, being for your own in- 
terests, would have little opinion of me if I 
took you out on a Monday mornin’ after 
your labors without so much as a bit o’ 
breakfast to sustain you. I’ll sit by you 
while you’re a-eating of your bacon. There’s 
a deal to consider of concerning Salem as I 
couldn’t well bring before you as long as you 
were in such trouble. Them were uncom- 
mon sermons, sir, yesterday ; I don’t know 
as I ever heard anything as w'as just to be 
compared with the mornin’ discourse, and 
most of the flock W'as of my opinion ; but 
what is the good of standing up for the pas- 
tor — I ask you candid, Mr. Vincent — when 
he’ll not take no pains to keep things 
square? I’m speaking plain, for you can’t 
mistake me as it’s anything but your own 
interests I am a-thinking of. We was all 
marching in, deacons and committee and all, 
to say as we was grateful to you for your 
instructions, and wishing you well out of 
your trouble — and I was in great hopes as 
matters might have been made up — when 
■' behold, w'hat we finds was the vestry empty 
and the pastor gone ! Now, I aint a-finding 
fault. Them news would explain anything ; 
but I don’t deny as Pigeon and the rest was 
put out ; and if you’ll be guided by me, Mr. 
Vincent, when you’ve done our business as 
is most important of all, you’ll go and make 
some visits, sir, and make yourself agree- 
able, if you’ll excuse me. It aint with no 
selfish thoughts as I speak,” said Tozer, 
energetically ; “ it’s not like asking of you 
to come a-visiting to me, nor setting myself 
'forward as the minister’s great friend — 
though we was remarking as the pastor was 
unknown in our house this fortnight and 
more— but it’s for peace and union, Mr. 
Vincent, and the good of the flock, sir, and 
to keep — as your good mother well knows 
aint easy in a congregation — all things 
straight.” 

When this little peroration was delivered, 
Vincent was seated at table, making what 
he could of the breakfast, in which both his 


mother and Tozer had interested themselves. 
It was with a little effort that the young man 
accepted this advice as the character and in- 
tentions of his adviser deserved. He swal- 
lowed what was* unpalatable in the counsel, 
and received the suggestion “ in as sweet a 
frame of mind as I could wish to see,” as 
Tozer afterwards described. 

“ I will go and make myself agreeable,” 
said the young minister, with a smile. 
“ Thank Heaven ! it is not so impossible to- 
day as it might have been yesterday ; I left 
the chapel so hurriedly, because ” 

“ I understand, sir,” said Tozer, benevo- 
lently interposing as Vincent paused, finding 
explanation impossible. “ Pigeon and the 
rest was put out, as I say, more nor I could 
see was reasonable — not as Pigeon is a man 
that knows his own mind. It’s the women 
as want the most managing. Now, Mr. 
Vincent, I’m ready, sir, if you are, and we 
wont lose no time.” 

Before going out, however, Vincent went 
to his sister’s room. She was lying in an 
utter quietness which went to his heart ; — 
silent, no longer uttering the wild fancies of 
a disordered brain, recovering, as the doc- 
tor thought ; but stretched upon her white 
couch, marble white, without any inclination 
apparently to lift the heavy lids of her eyes, 
or to notice anything that passed before her 
— a very sad sight to see. By her sat her 
mother, in a very different condition, anx- 
ious, looking into Arthur’s eyes, whispering 
counsels in his ears. “ O my dear boy, be 
very careful,” said Mrs. Vincent ; “ your 
dear papa always said that a minister’s flock 
was his first duty ; and now that Susan is 
getting better, 0 Arthur ! you must not let 
people talk about your sister — and have pa- 
tience, oh, have patience, dear ! ” This w^as 
said in wistful whispers, with looks which 
only half confided in Arthur’s prudence j 
and the widow sank into her chair when he 
left her, folding her hands in a little agony 
of self-restraint and compulsory quietness. 
She felt equal for it herself, if she had been 
at liberty to go out upon the flock once more 
in Arthur’s cause ; but who could tell how 
he might commit himself, he who was a 
young man, and took his own way, and did 
not know, as Tozer said, how to keep all 
things straight ? WhenMrs. Vincent thought 
of her son in personal conflict with Mrs. 
Pigeon, she lost faith in Arthur. She her- 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


254 

self might have conquered that difficult ad- 
versary, but what weapons had he to bring 
forth against the deacon’s wife, he who was 
only a minister and a man ? 

CnAPTER XXXI. 

“ And now that’s settled as far as we can 
settle it now,” said Tozer, as they left the 
magistrate’s office, where John Brown, the 
famous Carlingford solicitor, had accompa- 
nied them, “ you’ll go and see some of the 
chapel folks, Mr. Vincent? It’ll be took 
kind of you to lose no time, especially if 
you’d say a word just as it’s all over, and 
let them know the news is true.” 

“ I will go with you first,” said Vincent, 
who contemplated the butterman’s shop at 
that moment through a little halo of grati- 
tude and kindness. He went in to the back 
parlor with the gratified deacon, where Mrs. 
Tozer sat reading over again the same Gazette 
in which poor Susan’s history was summed 
up and ended. It seemed like a year to 
Vincent since he had dined with his mother 
at this big table, amid the distant odors 
of all the bacon and cheese. Mrs. Tozer put 
down the paper, and took off her spectacles 
as her visitor came in. “ It’s Mr. Vincent, 
Phoebe,” she said, with a little exclamation. 
“ Dear, dear, I never thought as the pastor 
W'ould be such a strange sight in my house 
—■not as I was meaning nothing unkind, 
Tozer, so there’s no occasion to look at me. 
I’m as glad as ever I can be to see the min- 
ister ; and what a blessing as it’s all settled, 
and the poor dear getting well too. Phoebe, 
you needn’t be a-hiding behind me, child, as 
if the pastor was thinking of how you was 
dressed. She has on her morning wrapper, 
Mr. Vincent, as she was helping her mother 
in, and we didn’t expect no visitors. Don’t 
be standing there, as if it was any matter to 
the minister how you was dressed.” 

“ O ma, as if I ever thought of such a 
thing ! ” said Phoebe; extending a pink un- 
covered arm out of the loose sleeve of her 
morning-dress to Vincent, and averting her 
face ; “ but to see Mr. Vincent is so like old 
times — and everything has seemed so differ- 
ent — and it is so pleasant to feel as if it 
were all coming back agaiw. O ma, to im- 
agine that I ever supposed Mr. Vincent 
could notice my dress, or think, of poor 
me ! ” added Phoebe, in a postscript under 
her breath. The minister heard the' latter 


words quite as well as the first. After he 
had shaken the pink, plump hand, he sat 
down on the opposite side of the table, and 
saw Phoebe, relieved against the light of the 
window, wiping a tender tear from her eye. 
All at once out of the darker and heavier 
trials which had abstracted him from com- 
mon life, the young Nonconformist plunged 
back into the characteristic troubles of his 
position. As usual, he made no response 
to Phoebe, found nothing civil to say, but 
turned with desperation to Mrs. Tozer, who 
was luckily about to speak. 

“ Don’t pay no attention to her, Mr. Vin- 
cent ; she’s a deal too feelin’. She oughtn’t 
to be minded, and then she’ll learn better,” 
said Mrs. Tozer. “ I am sure it wasn’t no 
wish of ours as you should ever stop away, 
if we had been your own relations we 
couldn’t have been more took up ; and 
where should a minister seek for sympathy 
if it isn’t in his own flock ? There aint no- 
body so safe to put your trust in, Mr. Vin- 
cent, as Salem folks. There’s a many fine 
friends a young man may have when he’s in 
a prosperous way, but it aint to be supposed 
they would stand by him in trouble ; and it’s 
then as you find the good of your real 
friends,” continued Mrs. Tozer, looking with 
some significance at her husband. Tozer, 
for his own part, rubbed his hands and sta- 
tioned himself with his back to the fire, as is 
the custom of Englishmen of all degrees. 
The husband and wife contemplated Vincent 
with complacence. With the kindest feel- 
ings in the world, they could not altogether 
restrain a little triumph. It was impossible 
now that the minister could mistake who 
were his true friends. 

But just then, strangely enough, a vision 
of a tender smile, a glance up in his face, 
the touch of a soft hand, came to Vincent’s 
mind. His fine friends ! he had but one, 
and she had stood by him in his trouble. 
From Tozer’s complacence the minister’s' 
mind went off with a bound of relief to that 
sweet, fruitless sympathy which was dearer 
than help. From her soft, perfumy presence 
to Mrs. Tozer’s parlor, with that pervading 
consciousness in it of the shop hard by and 
its store of provisions, what a wonderful 
difference ! It w^as not so easy to be grate- 
ful as he had at first thought. 

“ Mr. Tozer has been my real friend in- 
deed, and a most honest and thorough one,” 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


said Vincent. “ But I don’t think I have 
any other in Salem so sure and steady,” 
added the minister, after a little pause, half 
gratefully, half in bitterness. This senti- 
ment was not, however, resented by the as- 
sembled family. Phoebe leaned over her 
mother’s chair, and whispered, “ O ma, 
dear ! didn’t I always say he was full of 
feeling ? ” somewhat to the discomfiture of 
the person commented on ; while Tozer 
himself beamed upon the minister from be- 
fore the blazing fire. 

“ I said as we’d pull you through,” said 
Tozer, “ and I said as Pd stand by you ; 
and both I’ll do, sir, you take my word, if 
you’ll but stick to your duty ; and as for 
standing bail in a hundred pound or two,” 
continued the butterman, magnanimously, 
“ for a poor young creature as couldn’t be 
nothing but innocent, I don’t mind that, 
nor a deal more than that, to keep all things 
straight. It’s nothing but my duty. When 
a man is a responsible man, and well known 
in a place, it’s his business to make use of 
his credit, Mr. Vincent, sir, and his charac- 
ter for the good of his friends.” 

“It may be your duty, but you know 
there aint a many as w'ould have done it,” 
said his straightforward wife, “ as Mr. Vin- 
cent sees himself, and no need for nobody 
a-telling of him. There aint a many as 
would have stood up for the pastor; right 
and wrong, and finished off with the likes 
of this, and the minister don’t need us td 
say so. Dear, dear, Mr. Vincent, you aint 
a-going away already, and us hasn’t so much 
as seen you for I can’t tell how long ? I 
made sure you’d stop and take a bit of din- 
ner at least, not making no ceremony,” said 
Mrs. Tozer, “ for there’s always enough for 
a friend, and you can’t take us wrong.” 

Vincent had risen hurriedly to his feet, 
under the strong stimulant &f the butter- 
man’s self-applause. Conscious as he was 
of all that Tozer had really done, the minis- 
ter found it hard to listen and echo, with due 
humility and gratitude, the perfect satisfac- 
tion of the pair over their own generosity. 
He had no thanks to say when thus fore- 
stalled. “ O ma, how can you make so much 
of it ? ” cried Phoebe. “ The minister will 
think us so selfish ; and, oh, please, Mr. Vin- 
cent, when you go home, will you speak to 
your mother, and ask her to let me come and 
help with her nursing.^ I should do what- 


255 

ever she told me, and try to be a comfort to 
her — oh, I should indeed,” said Phoebe, 
clasping those pink hands. “ Nobody could 
be more devoted than I should be.” She 
cast down her eyes, and stood the image of 
maidenly devotedness between Vincent and 
the window. She struck him dumb, as she 
always did. He never was equal to the 
emergency where Phoebe was concerned. 
He took up his hat in his hands, and tried 
to explain lamely how he must go away — 
how he had visits to make — duties to do — 
and would have stuck fast, and lost Mrs. 
Tozer’s favor finally and forever, had not the 
butterman interposed. 

“ It’s me as is to blame,” said the worthy 
deacon. “ If it hadn’t have been as the pas- 
tor wouldn’t pass the door without coming 
in, I’d not have had him here to-day ; and 
if you women would think, you’d see. We’re 
stanch — and Mr. Vincent aint no call to* 
trouble himself about us ; but Pigeon and 
them, you see, as went off in a huff yester- 
day — that’s what the minister has got to do. 
You sha’n’t be kep’ no longer, sir, in my 
house. Duty afore pleasure, that’s my 
maxim. Good-mornin’, and I hope as you 
wont meet with no unpleasantness ; but if 
you sh'ould, Mr. Vincent, don’t be disheart- 
ened, sir — we’ll pull you through.” 

AVith this encouraging sentiment, Vincent 
was released from Mrs. Tozer’s parlor. He 
drew a long breath when he got out to the 
fresh air in the street, and faced the idea of 
the Pigeons and other recusants whom he 
was now bound to visit. AVhile he thought 
of them, all so many varieties of Mrs. Tozer’s 
parlor, without the kindness which met him 
there, the heart of the young Nonconformist 
failed him. Nothing but gratitude to Tozer 
could have sent him forth at all on this mis- 
sion of conciliation ; but now on the thres- 
hold of it, smarting from even Tozer’s well- 
intentioned patronage, a yearning for a little 
personal comfort seized upon Vincent’s mind. 
It was his duty to go away towards Grove 
Street, wh^re the poulterer’s residence was ; 
but his longing eyes strayed towards Grange 
Lane, where consolation dwelt. And, be- 
sides, was it not his duty to watch over the 
real criminal, for whose mysterious wicked- 
ness poor Susan had suffered ? It was not 
difficult to foresee how that argument would 
conclude. He wavered for a few minutes 
opposite Masters’ shop, gave a furtive glance 
back towards the butterman’s, and then, 
starting forward with sudden resolution, took 
his hasty way to Lady AVestern’s door ; only 
for a moment ; only to see that all was safe, 
and his prisoner still in custody. Vincent 
sighed over the thought with an involuntary 
quickening of his heart. To be detained in 
such custody, the young man thought, would 


SALEM CHAPEL 


256 

be sweeter than heaven ; and the -wild hope 
which came and went like a meteor about 
his path, sprang up with sudden intensity, 
and took the breath from his lips, and the 
color from his cheek, as he entered at that 
green garden door. 

Lady Western was by herself in the draw- 
ing-room — that room divided in half by the 
closed doors which Vincent remembered so 
well. She rose up out of the low chair in 
which she reposed, like some lovely swan 
amid billows of dark silken drapery, and 
held out her beautiful hand to him — both her 
beautiful hands — with an effusion of kind- 
ness and sympathy. The poor young Non- 
conformist took them into his own, and for- 
got the very existence of Salem. The sweet- 
ness of the moment took all the sting out 
of his fate. He looked at .her without say- 
ing anything, with his heart in his eyes. 
Consolation ! It was all he had come for. 
He could have gone away thereafter and met 
all the Pigeons in existence ; but more hap- 
piness still was in store for him — she pointed 
to a chair on the other side of her work-table. 
There was nobody else near to break the 
charm. The silken rustle of her dress, and 
that faint perfume which she always had 
about her pervaded the ’rosy atmosphere. 
Out of purgatory, out of bitter life beset with 
trouble, the young man had leaped for one 
moment into paradise ; and who could w'on- 
der that he resigned himself to the spell ? 

“ I am so glad you have come,” said Lady 
Western. “ I am sure you must have hated 
me, and everything that recalled my name ; 
but it was impossible for any one to be more 
grieved than I w^as, Mr. Vincent. Now, will 
you tell me about Rachel ? She sits by her- 
self in her own room. When I go in she 
gives me a look of fright which I cannot un- 
derstand. Fright ! Can you imagine Ra- 
chel frightened, Mr. Vincent — and of me ? ” 

“ Ah, yes. I would not venture to come 
into the presence of the angels if I had guilt 
on my hands,” said Vincent, not very well 
knowing what he said. 

“ Mr. Vincent ! what can you mean ? You 
alarm me very much,” said the young Dow- 
ager ; “ but perhaps it is about her little 
girl. I don’t think she knows where her 
daughter is. Indeed,” said Lady Western, 
with a cloud on her beautiful face, “ you 
must not think I ever approved of my broth- 
er’s conduct ; but when he was so anxious 
to have his child, I think she might have 
given in to him a little— don’t you think so ? 
The child might have done him good per- 
haps. She is very lovely, I hear. Did you 
see her ? O Mr. Vincent, tell me about it. 

I cannot understand how you are connected 
with it all. She trusted in you so much, 
and now she is afraid of you. Tell me how 


' it is. Hush ! she is ringing her bell. She 
has seen you come into the house.” 

“But I don’t want to see Mrs. — Mrs. 
Mildmay,” said Vincent, rising up. “ I don’t 
know why I came at all, if it were not to see 
the sun shining. It is dark down below 
where I am,” said the young man, with an 
involuntary outburst of the passion which 
at that moment suddenly appeared to him in 
all its unreasonableness. “Forgive me. It 
was only a longing I had to see the light.” 

Lady Western looked up with her sweet 
eyes in the minister’s face. She was not ig- 
norant of the condition of mind he w'as in, 
but she was sorry for him to the bottom of 
her heart. To cheer him a little could not 
harm any one. “ Come back soon,” she 
said, again holding out her hand with a smile. 
“ I am so sorry for your troubles ; and if we 
can do anything to comfort you, come back 
soon again, Mr. Vincent.” When the poor 
Nonconformist came to himself after these 
words, he w^as standing outside the garden 
door, out of paradise, his heart throbbing, 
and his pulse beating in a kind of sweet de- 
lirium. In that very moment of delight he 
recognized, wdth a thrill of exaltation and 
anguish, the madness of his dream. No mat- 
ter. What if his heart broke after ? Now, 
at least, he could take the consolation. But 
if it was hard to face Mrs. Pigeon before, it 
may -well be supposed that it was not easy 
,now, with all this world of passionate fancies 
throbbing in his brain, to turn away from 
his elevation and encounter Salem and its 
irritated deacons. Vincent went slowly up 
Grange Lane, trying to make up his mind 
to his inevitable duty. When he was nearly 
opposite the house of Dr. Marjoribanks, he 
paused to look back. The garden door wa^ 
again open, and somebody else was going 
into the enchanted house. Somebody else ; 
—a tall, slight figure, in a loose, light-col- 
ored dress, which he recognized instinctively 
with an agony of jealous rage. A minute 
before he had allowed to himself, in an ex- 
quisite despair, that to hope was madness ; 
but the sight of his rival awoke other 
thoughts in th’fe mind of the minister. With 
quick eyes he identified the companion of his 
midnight journey — he in whose name all 
Susan’s wretchedness had been wrought — 
he whom Lady Western could trust “with 
life — to death.” Vincent went back at the 
sight of him,, and found the door now close 
shut, through which his steps had passed. 
Close shut — enclosing the other — shutting 
him out in the cold external gloom. He for- 
got all he had to do for himself and his 
friends — he forgot his duty, his family, 
everything in the world but hopeless love 
and passionate jealousy, as he paced up and 
down before Lady Western’s door. 


PART X. — CHAPTER XXXII. 

^ But while Mrs. Vincent sat in Susan’s 
sick-room, with her mind full of troubled 
thoughts, painfully following her son into 
an imaginary and unequal conflict with the 
wife of the rebellious deacon ; and while the 
Salem congregation in general occupied it- 
self with conjectures how this internal divi- 
sion could be healed, and what the pastor 
would do, the pastor himself was doing the 
very last thing he ought to have done in the 
circumstances — lingering down Grange Lane 
in the broad daylight with intent to pass 
Lady W estern’s door — that door from which 
he had himself emerged a very few minutes 
before. Why did he turn back and loiter 
again along that unprofitable way ? He did 
not venture to ask himself the question ; he 
only did it in an utterly unreasonable access 
of jealousy and rage. If he had been Lady 
Western’s accepted lover instead of the hope- 
less worshipper afar off of that bright unat- 
tainable creature, he could still have had no 
possible right to forbid the entrance of Mr. 
Fordham at that garden gate. He went 
back with a mad, unreasoning impulse, only 
excusable in consideration of the excited 
state of mind into which so many past events 
had concurred to throw him. But the door 
opened again as he passed it. Instinctively 
Vincent stood still, without knowing why. 
It was not Mr. Fordham who came out. It 
was a stealthy figure, which made a tremu- 
lous pause at sight of him, and, uttering a 
cry of dismay, fixed eyes which still gleamed, 
but had lost all their steadiness, upon his 
face. Vincent felt that he would not have 
recognized her anywhere but at this door. 
Her thin lips, which had once closed so firm- 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 257 

“You ! ” she cried, with a shrill tone of ter- 


ror and confusion in her voice, “ I did not 
look for you ! ” It was all her quivering 
lips would say. 

The sight of her had roused Vincent. 
“ You were going to escape,” he said. “ Do 
you forget your word? Must I tell her 
everything, or must I place you in surer 
custody ? You have broken your word.” 

“ My word ! I did not give you my word,” 
she cried, eagerly. “ No. I — I never said 
— and,” after a pause, “ if I had said it, 
how do you imagine I was going to escape? 
Escape! from what? That is the worst- 
one cannot escape,” said the miserable 
woman, speaking as if by an uncontrollable 
impulse, “ never more ; especially if one 
keeps quiet in one place and has nothing to 
do,” she continued after a pause, recovering 
herself by strange gleams now and then for 
a moment ; “ that is why I came out, to es- 
cape, as you say, for half an hour, Mr. Vin- 
cent. Besides, I don’t have news enough — 
not nearly enough. How do you think I 
can keep still when nobody sends me any 
news ? How long is it since I saw you last? 
And I have heard nothing since then — not 
a syllable I and you expect me to sit still, 
because I have given my word ? Besides,” 
after another breathless pause, and another 
gleam of self-recovery, “ the laws of honor 
don’t extend to women. We are weak, and 
we are allowed to lie.” 

“ You are speaking wildly,” said Vincent, 
with some compassion and some horror, put- 
ting his hand on her arm to guide her back 
to the house. Mrs. Hilyard gave a slight 
convulsive start, drew away from his touch, 
and gazed upon him with an agony of fright 


ly, and expressed with such distinctness the ! and terror in her eyes, 
flying shades of amusement and ridicule, 
hung apart loosely, with a perpetual quiver 
of hidden emotion. Her face, always dark 
and colorless, yet bearing such an unmistak- 
able tone of vigor and strength, was haggard 
and ghastly; her once assured and steady 
step furtive and trembling. She gave him 
an appalled look, and uttered a little cry. 

She shivered as she looked at him, making 
desperate vain efforts to recover her com- 
posure- and conceal the agitation into which 
his sudden appearance had thrown her. But 
nature at last had triumphed over this wo- 
man who had defied her so long. She had • Lady ^V estern, to please a child s eye. 
not strength left to accomplish the cheat. Beauty is good — very good. I was once 


We agreed that I was to stay with Alice,” 
she said. “You forget I am staying with 
Alice ; she — she keeps me safe, you know. 
Ah! people change so; I am sometimes — 
half afraid — of Alice, Mr. Vincent. My 
child is like her — my child— she did not 
know me ! ” cried the wretched woman, with 
a sob that came out of the depths of her 
heart ; “ after ail that happened, she did not 
know me ! To be sure, that was quite nat- 
ural,” she went on again, once more recov- 
ering her balance for an instant, “ she could 
not know me ! and I am not beautiful, like 

a 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


n 


258 SALEM CHAPEL. 


pretty myself ; any man would have forgiven 
me as you did when Alice came with her 
lovely face ; but I dare say your mother 
would not have minded had it been she. 
Ah, that reminds me,” said Mrs. Hilyard, 
gradually acquiring a little more steadiness, 
“ that was why I came out : to go to your 
mother — to ask if perhaps she had heard any- 
thing — from my child.” 

“ This is madness,” said Vincent ; “ you 
know my mother could not possibly hear 
about your child ; you want to escape — I can 
see it in your eyes.” 

“ If you will tell me what kind of things 
people can escape from, I will answer you,” 
said his strange companion, still becoming 
more composed. “ Hush ! I said what was 
true. The governess, you know, had your 
address. Is it very long since yesterday when 
I got that news from Dover ? Never mind. 
I dare say I am asking wild questions that 
cannot have any answer. Do you remember 
being here with me once before ? Do you 
remember looking through the grating and 

seeing ? Ah, there is Mr. Fordham 

now with Alice ! Poor young man I ” said 
Mrs. Hilyard, turning once more to look at 
him, still vigilant and anxious, but with a 
softened glance. “ Poor minister ! I told 
you not to fall in love with her lovely face. 
I told you she was kind, too kind — she does 
not mean any harm. I warned you. AVho 
could have thought then that we should have 
so -much to do with each other?” she re- 
sumed, shrinking from him, and trying to 
conceal how she shrank with another con- 
vulsive shiver ; “ but you were going to visit 
your people or something. I must not keep 
you, Mr. Vincent ; you must go away.” 

“ Not till you have returned to the house ; 
and given me your word of honor,” said Vin- 
cent, “ not to escape or to attempt to escape ; 
or else I must tell Jier everything, or place 
you in surer custody. I will not leave you 
here.” 

“ My word ! but women are not bound by 
their honor; our honor means — not our 
word,” cried Mrs. Hilyard, wildly ; “ my 
parole he means ; soldiers and heroes and 
men of honor give their parole ; you don’t 
exact it from women. AVords are not kept 
to us, Mr. Vincent ; do you expect us to 
keep them ? Yes, yes ; I know I am talking 
wildly. Is it strange, do you think ? But 
what if I give you my word, and nobody 


sends me any further news — nothing about 
my child P Women are only wild anim-als 
when their children are taken from them. 
I will forget it and go away for news — new's ! 
That is what I want. Escape ! ” she repeated, 
with a miserable cry ; “ who can escape ? I 
do not understand w’hat it means.” 

“But you must not leave this house,” 
said Vincent, firmly. “You understand 
what I mean. You must not leave Lady 
AVestern. Go with her where she pleases; 
but unless you promise on your honor to 
remain here, and with her, I shall be obliged 
to ” 

“Hush!” she said, trembling — “hush! 
My honor ! — and you still trust in it? I 
will promise,” she continued, turning and 
looking anxiously round into the dull win- 
ter daylight, as if calculating what chance 
she had of rushing away and eluding him. 
Then her eyes returned to the face of the 
young man, who stood firm and watchful 
beside her — agitated, yet so much stronger, 
calmer, even more resolute than she; then 
shrinking back, and keeping her eyes, with 
a kind of fascinated gaze, upon his face, she 
repeated the words slowly, “ I promise — 
upon my honor. I will not go away — es- 
cape as you call it. If I should go mad, 
that will not matter. Yes, ring the bell for 
me. You are the stronger now. I will obey 
you and go back. You have taken a woman’s 
parole, Mr. Vincent,” she went on with a 
strange spasmodic shadow of that old move- 
ment of her. mouth ; “ it will be curious to 
note if she can keep it. Good-by — good- 
by.” She spoke with a trembling despera- 
tion of calmness, mastering herself with all 
her power. She did not remove her eyes 
from his face till the door had been opened. 
“ I promise on my honor,” she repeated, 
with again a gleam of terror, as Vincent 
stood watching. Then the door closed, 
shutting in that tragic, wretched figure. 
She was gone back to her prison, with her 
misery, from which she could not escape. 
In that same garden, Vincent, with the 
sharp eyes of love and despair, even while 
watching her, had caught afar oif a vision 
of two figures together, w'alking slowdy, one 
leaning on the other, with the lingering steps 
of happiness. The sight went to his heart 
with a dull pang of certainty, w^hich crushed 
down in a moment the useless effervescence 
of his former mood. His prisoner and he 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 269 


parted, going in and out, one scarcely less 
miserable at that moment than the other. 
In full sight of them both lingered for the 
same moment these two in the tenderest 
blessedness of life. Vincent turned sharp 
round, and went away the whole length of 
the long road past St. Roque’s, past the 
farthest village suburb of Carlingfbrd, sti- 
fling his heart that it should say nothing. 
He had forgotten all about those duties 
which brought him there. Salem had van- 
ished from his horizon. He saw nothing in 
heaven or earth but that miserable woman 
goiug back to her prison, interwoven with 
the vision of these two in their garden of 
paradise. The sight possessed him, heart 
and spirit ; he could not even feel that he 
felt it, his heart lying stifled in his bosom. 
It waSf and^here was no more to say. 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Mrs. Vincent made many pilgrimages 
out of the sick-room that day ; her mind 
was disturbed and restless ; she could not 
keep still by Susan’s side. She w'ent and 
strayed through her son’s rooms, looked at 
his books, gave a furtive glance at his linen; 
then went back and sat down for a little, 
until a renewed access of anxiety sent her 
wandering forth once more. Then she 
heard him come in, and went out to see 
him. But he was gloomy and uncommuni- 
cative, evidently indisposed to satisfy her in 
any way, absorbed in his own thoughts. 
Mrs. Vincent came and sat by him while he 
dined, thinking, in her simplicity, that it 
would be a pleasure to Arthur. But Arthur, 
wdth the unsocial habits of a man accus- 
tomed to live alone, had already set up a 
book before him while he ate, leaving his 
mother to wonder by herself behind what 
was the world of unknown thought that 
rapt her son, and into which her wistful 
wonder could not penetrate. But the widow 
was wise in her generation : she would not 
worry him with questions which it was very 
'apparent beforehand that he did not mean 
to answer. She admitted to herself, with a 
pang of mingled pain, curiosity, and resig- 
nation, that Arthur was no longer a boy 
having no secrets from his mother. Once 
more the little woman looked at the unrea- 
sonable male creature shut up within itself, 
and decided, with a feminine mixture of pity 
and awe, that it must be allowed to take its 


own time and way of disclosing itself, and 
that to torture it into premature utterance 
would be foolish, not to say impracticable. 
She left him, accordingly, to himself, and 
went away again, returning, however, ere 
long, in her vague restlessness, as she had 
been doing all day. The early winter even- 
ing had closed in, and the lamp was lighted 
— the same lamp which had smoked and 
annoyed Mrs. Vincent’s nice perceptions 
the first evening she was in Carlingford. 
Vincent had thrown himself on a sofa with 
a book, not to read, but as a disguise under 
which he could indulge his own thoughts, 
when his mother came quietly back into the 
room. Mrs. Vincent thought it looked dark 
and less cheerful than it ought. She poked 
the fire softly not to disturb Arthur, and 
made it blaze. Then she turned to the 
lamp, which flared huskily upon the table. 
“ It smokes more than ever,” said Mrs. 
Vincent, half apologetically, in case Arthur 
should observe her proceedings as she took 
off the globe. He, as was natural, put 
down his book and gazed at her with a cer- 
tain impatient wonder, half contemptuous 
of that strange female development which 
amid all troubles could cany through from 
one crisis of life to another that miraculous 
trifling, and concern itself about the smok- 
ing of a lamp. As she screwed it up and 
down and adjusted the wick, with the smoky 
light flaring upon her anxious face, and 
magnifying the shadow of her little figure 
against the wall behind, her son looked on 
with a feeling very similar to that which 
had moved Mrs. Vincent when she watched 
him eating his dinner with his book set up 
before him. These were points upon which 
the mother and son could not understand 
each other. But the sight disturbed his 
thoughts and touched his temper ; he got up 
from the sofa and threw down his unread 
book. 

“ You women are incomprehensible,” said 
the young man, with an irritation he could 
not subdue — “ what does it matter about 
the lamp ? but if the world were going to 
pieces you must still be intent upon such 
trifles — leave that to the people of the 
house.” 

“ But, my dear, the people of the house 
do^l’t understand it,” said Mrs. Vincent. 
“ O Arthur, it is often the trifles that are 
the most important. I have had Mrs. Tozer 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


260 

calling upon me to-day, and Mrs. Tufton. 
I don’t wonder, dear, if you find them a 
little tiresome ; but that is what every pas- 
tor has to expect. I dare say you have 
been worried to-day paying so many visits. 
Hush, there is some one coming up-stairs. 
It is Mr. Tozer, Arthur. I can hear his 
voice.” 

Upon which the minister, conscious of not 
being prepared for Tozer’s questions, gave 
vent to an impatient ejaculation. “ Never 
a moment’s respite ! and now I shall have 
to give an account of myself,” said the un- 
fortunate Nonconformist. Mrs. Vincent, 
who had just then finished her operations 
with the lamp, looked up reproachfully over 
the light at her son. 

“ O Arthur, consider how kind he has 
been ! Your dear father would never have 
used such an expression — but you. have my 
quick temper,” said the widow, with a little 
sigh. She shook hands very cordially with 
the good butterman when he made his ap- 
pearance. “I was just going to make tea 
for my son,” said Mrs. Vincent. “ I have 
scarcely been able to sit with him at all 
since Susan took ill. Arthur, ring the bell 
— it is so kind of you to come ; you will take 
a cup of tea with us while my son and you 
talk matters over — that is, if you don’t ob- 
ject to my presence?” said the minister’s 
mother, with a smile. “ Your dear papa al- 
ways liked me to be with him, Arthur ; and 
until he has a wife, Mr. Tozer, I dare say 
his mother will not be much in the way 
when it is so kind a friend as you he has to 
talk over his business with. Bring tea di- 
rectly, please. I fear you have forgotten 
what I said to you about the lamp, which 
burns quite nicely when you take a little 
pains. Arthur, will you open the window 
to clear the atmosphere of that smoke ? and 
perhaps Mr. Tozer will take a seat nearer 
the fire.” 

“ I am obliged to you, ma’am,” said the 
butterman, who had a cloud on his face. 
“ Not no nearer, thank you all the same. 
If I hadn’t thought you’d have done tea, I 
shouldn’t have come troubling Mr. Vincent, 
not so soon,” and Tozer turned a doubtful 
glance towards the minister, who stood 
longer at the window than he need have 
done. The widow’s experienced eye saw 
that some irritation had risen between her 
Bon and his friend and patron, Tozer was 


suspicious, and ready to take offence — Ar- 
thur, alas ! in an excited and restless mood, 
only too ready to give it. His mother could 
read in his shoulders, as he stood at the 
window with his back to her, that impulse 
to throw off the' yoke and resent the inquisi- 
tion to which he was subject, which, all con- 
scious as he was of not having carried out 
Tozer’s injunctions, seized upon the unfor- 
tunate Nonconformist. With a little trem- 
ulous rush, Mrs. Vincent put herself in the 
breach. 

“ I am sure so warm a friend as Mr. 
Tozer can never trouble any of my family 
at any time,” said the widow, with a little 
effusion. “ I know too well how rare a 
thing real kindness is— and I am very glad 
you have come just now while I can be 
here,” she added, with a sensatiqn of thank- 
fulness perhaps not so complimentary to 
Tozer as it looked on the surface. “ Arthur, 
dear, I think that will do now. You may 
put up the window and come back to your 
chair. You don’t smell the lamp, Mr. 
Tozer ? and here is the little maid with the 
tea.” 

Mrs. Vincent moved about the tray almost 
in a bustle when the girl had placed it on 
the table. She re-arranged all the cups and 
moved everything on the table, while her 
son took up a gloomy position behind her 
on the hearth-rug, and Tozer preserved an 
aspect of ominous civility on the other side 
of the table. She was glad that the little 
maid had to return two or three times with 
various forgotten adjuncts, though even then 
Mrs. Vincent’s instincts of good management 
prompted her to point out to the handmaiden 
the disadvantages of her thoughtlessness. 
“ If you had but taken time to think what 
would be wanted, you would have saved 
yourself a great deal of trouble,” said the 
minister’s mother, with a tremble of expec- 
tation thrilling her frame, looking wistfully 
round to see whether anything more was 
wanted, or if, perhaps, another minute might 
be gained before the storm broke. She gave 
Arthur a look of entreaty as she called him 
forward to take his place at table. She 
knew that real kindness was not very often 
to be met with in this cross-grained world ; 
and if people are conscious of having been 
^ind, it is only natural they should expect 
gratitude ! Such was the sentiment in her 
eyes as she turned round and fixed them 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 261 


I upon her son. “ Tea is ready, Arthur,” said 
|| the widow, in a tone of secret supplication. 
!'• And Arthur understood his mother, and was 
!: less and less inclined to conciliate as he 
came forward out of the darkness, where he 
might look sulky if he pleased, and sat down 
full in the light of the lamp, which smoked 
no longer. They were not a comfortable 
j party. Mrs. Vincent felt it so necessary that 
i she should talk and keep them separated, 
{ that she lost her usual self-command, and 
I subjects failed her in her utmost need. 

“ Let me give you another cup of tea,” she 
said, as the butterman paused in the super- 
numerary meal which that excellent man 
was making ; “ I am so glad you happened 
to come this evening when I am taking a 
little leisure. I hope the congregation will 
not think me indifferent, Mr. Tozer. I am 
sure you and Mrs. Tozer will kindly explain 
to them how much I have been occupied. 
When Susan is well, I hope to make ac- 
quaintance with all my son’s people. Ar- 
thur, my dear boy, you are over-tired, you 
don’t eat anything — and you made a very 
poor dinner. I wish you would advise him to 
take a little rest, Mr. Tozer. He minds his 
mother in most things, but not in this. It 
is vain for me to say anything to him about 
giving up work ; but perhaps a little advice 
from you would have more effect. I spoke 
to Dr. Rider on the subject, and he says a 
little rest is all my son requires ; but rest is 
exactly what he will never take. It was just 
the same with his dear father — and you are 
not strong enough, Arthur, to bear so much.” 

“ I dare say as you’re right, fna’am,” said 
Tozer ; “ if he was to take a little more ex- 
ercise and walking about — most of us Salem 
folks wouldn’t mind a little less on Sundays 
to have more of the minister at other times. 
I hope as there wasn’t no unpleasantness, 
Mr. Vincent, between you and Pigeon when 
you see him to-day ? ” 

“ I did not see him ;--I mean I am sorry 
I was not able to call on Pigeon to-day,” 
said Vincent, hastily ; “ I was unexpectedly 
detained,” he added, growing rather red, 
and looking Tozer in the face. “ Indeed, I 
am not sure that I ought to call on Pigeon,” 
continued the minister, after a pause ; I have 
done nothing to offend him. If he chooses 
to take an affront which was never intended; 
I can’t help it. Why should I go and court 
every man who is sulky or ill-tempered in 


the congregation ? Look here, Tozer — you 
are a sensible man — you have been very 
kind, as my mother says. I set out to-day 
intending to go and see this man for your 
sake; but you know very well this is not 
what I came to Carlingford for. If I had 
known the sort of thing that was required 
of me ! ” cried Vincent, rising up and resum- 
ing his place on the hearth-rug — “ to go with 
my hat in my hand, and beg this one and 
the other to forgive me, and receive me into 
favor : — why, what have I ever done to 
Pigeon ? if he has anything to find fault 
with, he had much better come to me, and 
have it out.” 

“ Mr. Vincent, sir,” said Tozer, solemnly, 
pushing away his empty teacup, and leaning 
forward over the table on his folded arms, 
“ them aint the sentiments for a pastor in 
our connection. That’s a style of thing as 
may do among fine folks, or in the church 
where there’s no freedom ; but them as 
chooses their own pastor, and pays their own 
pastor, and don’t spare no pains to make 
him comfortable, has a right to expect dif- 
ferent. Them aint the sentiments, sir, for 
Salem folks. I don’t say if they’re wrong or 
right — I don’t make myself a judge of no 
man ; but I’ve seen a deal of our connection 
and human nature in general, and this I 
know, that a minister as has to please his 
fiock, has got to please his flock whatever 
happens, and neither me nor no other man 
can make it different ; and that Mrs. Vin- 
cent, as has seen life, can tell you as well as 
I can. Pigeon aint neither here nor there. 
It’s the flock as has to be considered — and 
it aint preaching alone as wdll do that ; and 
that your good mother, sir, as knows the 
world, will tell you as well as me.” 

“ But Arthur is well aware of it,” said 
the alarmed mother, interposing hastily, 
conscious that to be thus appealed to was 
the greatest danger which could threaten her. 
“ His dear father always told him so ; yet, 
after all, Mr. Vincent used to say,” added tl^e 
anxious diplomatist, “ that nothing was to 
be depended on in the end but the pulpit. 
I have heard him talking of it with the lead- 
ing people in the connection, Mr. Tozer. 
They all used to say that, though visiting 
was very good, and a pastor’s duty, it was 
the pulpit, after all, that was to be most 
trusted to ; and I have always seen in my 
experience — I don’t know if the same has 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


262 

occurred to you — ^that hoih gifts are very 
rarely to be met with. Of course, we 
should all strive after perfection,” contin- 
ued the minister’s mother, with a tremulous 
smile — “ but it is so seldom met with that 
any one has both gifts ! Arthur, my dear 
boy, I wish you would eat something ; and, 
Mr. Tozer, let me give yoij another cup of 
tea.” 

“ No more for me, ma’am, thankye,” said 
Tozer, laying his hand over his cup. “I 
don’t deny as there’s truth in what you say. 
I don’t deny as a family here and there in a 
flock may be aggravating like them Pigeons. 
Pm not the man to be hard on a minister, 
if that aint his turn. A pastor may have a 
weakness, and not feel himself as equal to 
one part of his work as to another ; but to 
go for to say as visiting and keeping the 
flock pleased, aint his duty — it’s that, ma’am, 
as goes to my heart.” 

Tozer’s pathos touched a lighter chord in 
the bosom of the minister. He came back 
to his seat with a passing sense of amuse- 
ment. “ If Pigeon has anything to find 
fault with, let him come and have it out,” 
said Vincent, bringing, as his mother in- 
stantly perceived, a less clouded countenance 
into the light of the lamp. “You, who are 
a much better judge than Pigeon, were not 
displeased on Sunday,” added the minister, 
not without a certain complacency. Look- 
ing back upon the performances of that day, 
the young Nonconformist himself was not 
displeased. He knew now — though he was 
unconscious at the time — that he had made 
a great appearance in the pulpit of Salem, 
and that once more the eyes of Carlingford, 
unused to oratory, and still more unused to 
great and passionate emotion, were turned 
upon him. 

“ Well, sir, if it come to be a question of 
that,” said the mollified deacon ; “ but no — 
it aint that — I can’t, whatever my feelings is, 
be forgetful of my dooty ! ” cried Tozer, in 
sudden excitement. “ it aint that, Mr. Vin- 
cent ; it’s for your good I’m, a-speaking up 
and letting you know my mind. It aint the 
pulpit, sir. I’ll not say as I ever had a word 
to say against your sermons ; but when the 
minister goes out of my house a-saying as 
he’s going to visit the flock, and when he’s 
to be seen the next moment, Mrs. Vincent, 
not going to the flock, but a-spending his 
precious time in Grange Lane with them as 


don’t know nothing, and don’t care nothing 
for Salem, nor understand the w'ays of folks 

like us ” ^ 

Here Tozer w’as interrupted suddenly by 
the minister, who once more rose from his 
chair with an angry exclamation. What he 
might have said in the hasty impulse of the 
moment nobody could tell ; but Mrs Vin- 
cent, hastily stumbling up on her part from 
her chair, burst in with a tremulous voice — 
“ Arthur, ray dear boy ! did you hear Su- 
san call me ? — hark ! I fancied I heard her 
voice. O Arthur, dear, go and see, I am toe 
weak to run myself. Say I am coming di- 
rectly — hark ! do you think it is Susan V O 
Arthur, go and see ! ” 

Startled by her earnestness, though de- 
claring he heard nothing, the young man 
hastened away. Mrs. Vincent seized her 
opportunity without loss of time. 

“ Mr. Tozer,” said the widow, “ I am just 
going to my sick child. Arthur and you will 
be able to talk of your business more freely 
when I am gone, and I hope you will be 
guided to give him good advice ; what I am 
afraid of is, that he will throw it all up,” 
continued Mrs. Vincent, leaning her hand 
upon the table, and bending forward confi- 
dential and solemn to the startled butter- 
man, “ as so many talented young men in 
our connection do now-a-days. Young men 
are so difficult to deal with ; they wdll not put 
up with things that we know must be put up 
with,” said the minister’s mother, shaking her 
head with a sigh. “ That is how we are losing 
all our young preachers ; — an accomplished 
young man has so many ways of getting on 
now. O Mr. Tozer, I rely upon you to give 
my son good advice — if he is aggravated, it 
is my terror that he will throw it all up ! 
Good-night. You have been our kind friend, 
and I have such trust in you ! ” Saying 
which the widow shook hands with him ear- 
nestly and went away, leaving the worthy 
deacon much shaken, and with a weight of 
responsibility upon him. Vincent met her 
at the door, assuring her that Susan had not 
called ; but with a heroism which nobody 
suspected, trembling with anxiety, yet con- 
scious of having struck a master-stroke, his 
mother glided away to the stillness of the 
sick-room, where she sat questioning her own 
wisdom all the evening after, and wondering 
whether, after all, at such a crisis, she had 
done right to come away. 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


When the minister and the deacon were 
left alone together, instead of returning with 
zest to their interrupted discussion, neither 
of them said anything for some minutes. 
Once more Vincent took up his position on 
the hearth-rug, and Tozer gazed ruefully at 
the. empty cup which he still covered with 
his hand, full of troubled thoughts. The re- 
sponsibility was almost too much for Tozer. 
He could scarcely realize to himself what 
terrors lay involved in that threatened dan- 
ger, or what might happen if the minister 
threw it all up ! He held his breath at the 
awful thought. The widow's Parthian ar- 
row had gone straight to the butterman’s 
heart. 

“ I hope, sir, as you wont think there’s 
anything but an anxious feelin’ in the flock 
to do you justice as our pastor,” said Tozer, 
with a certain solemnity, “ or that we aint 
sensible of our blessin’s. Pve said both to 
yourself and others, as you was a young man 
of great promise, and as good a preacher as 
I ever see in our connection, Mr. Vincent, 
and I’ll stand by what I’ve said ; but you 
aint above taking a friend’s advice — not 
speaking with no authority,” added the good 
butterman, in a conciliatory tone ; “ it’s all 
along of the women, sir — it’s them as is at 
the bottom of all the mischief in a flock. It 
aint Pigeon, bless you, as is to blame. And 
even my missis, though she’s not to say un- 
reasonable as women go — none of them can 
abide to hear of you a-going after Lady 
Western — that’s it, Mr. Vincent. She’s a 
lovely creature,” cried Tozer, with enthusi- 
asm ; “ there aint one in Carlingford to com- 
pare with her, as I can see, and I wouldn’t 
be the one to blame a young man as was car- 
ried away. But there couldn’t no good come 
of it, and Salem folks is touchy and jealous,” 
continued the worthy deacon ; “ that was all 
as I meant to say.” 

Thus the conference ended amicably after 
a little more talk, in which Pigeon and the 
other malcontents were made a sacrifice of 
and given up by the anxious butterman, 
upon whom Mrs. Vincent’s parting words 
had made so deep an impression. Tozer 
went home thereafter to overawe his angry 
wife, whom Vincent’s visit to Lady Western 
had utterly exasperated, with the dread re- 
sponsibility now laid upon them. “ What 
if he was to throAV it all up ! ” said Tozer. 
That alarming possibility struck silence and 


263 

dismay to the very heart of the household. 
Perhaps it was the dawn of a new era of af- 
fairs in Salem. The deacon’s very sleep was 
disturbed by recollections of the promising 
young men who, now he came to think of it, 
had been lost to the connection, as Mrs. Vin- 
cent suggested, and had thrown it all up. 
The fate of the chapel, and all the new sit- 
tings let under the ministry of the young 
Nonconformist, seemed to hang on Tozer’s 
hands. He thought of the weekly crowd, 
and his heart stirred. Not many deacons in 
the connection could boast of being crowded 
out of their own pews Sunday after Sunday 
by the influx of unexpected hearers. The 
enlightenment of Carlingford, as well as the 
filling of the chapel, was at stake. Clearly, 
in the history of Salem, a new era had be- 
gun. 

CHAPTER XXXrV. 

That week passed on without much inci- 
dent. To Vincent and his mother, in whose 
history days had, for some time past, been 
counting like years, it might have seemed a 
very grateful pause, but for the thundrous 
atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty which 
clouded over them on every side. Susan’s 
recovery did not progress; and Dr. Rider 
began to look as serious over her utter lan- 
guor and apathy, which nothing seemed able 
to disturb, as he had done at her delirium. 
The Salem people stood aloof, as Mrs. Vin- 
cent perceived, with keen feminine observa- 
tion. She could not persuade herself, as she 
had tried to persuade Mrs. Tozer, that the 
landlady answered inquiries at the door by 
way of leaving the sick-room quiet. The 
fact was, that except Lady Western’s fine 
footman, the sight of whom at the minister’s 
door was far from desirable, nobody came 
to make inquiries except Mrs. Tufton and 
Phoebe Tozer, the latter of whom found no 
encouragement in her visits. Politic on all 
other points the widow could not deny her- 
self, when circumstances put it in her power 
to extinguish Phoebe. Mrs. Vincent would 
not have harmed a fly, but it gave her a 
certain pleasure to wound the rash female 
bosom which had, as she supposed, formed 
plans of securing her son. As for Tozer 
himself, his visits had almost ceased. He 
was scarcely to be seen even in the shop, 
into which sometimes the minister himself 
gazed disconsolately when he strayed out in 


2G4 SALEM CHAPEL. 


the twilight to walk his cares away. The 
good butterman was otherwise employed. 
He was wrestling with Pigeon in many a 
close encounter, holding little committees in 
the back parlor. On his single arm and 
strength he felt it now to depend whether 
or not the pastor could tide it over, and be 
pulled through. ^ 

As for Vincent himself, he had retired from 
the conflict. He paid no visits ; with a cer- 
tain half-conscious falling back upon the one 
thing he could do best, he devoted himself 
to his sermons. At least he shut himself 
up to write morning after morning, and re- 
mained all day dull and undisturbed, brood- 
ing over his work. The congregation some- 
how got to hear of his abstraction. And to 
the offended mind of Salem there was some- 
thing imposing in the idea of the minister, 
misunderstood and unappreciated, thus re- 
tiring from the field and devoting himself 
to “ study.”- Even Mrs. Pigeon owned to 
herself a certain respect for the foe who did 
not humble himself, but withdrew with dig- 
nity into the intrenchments of his own posi- 
tion. It was fine ; but it was not the thing 
for Salem. Mrs. Brown had a tea-party on 
the Thursday, to Avhich the pastor was not 
even invited, but where there were great and 
manifold discussions about him, and where 
the Tozers found themselves an angry mi- 
nority, suspected on all sides. “ A pastor 
as makes himself agreeable here and there, 
but don’t take no thought for the good of 
the flock in general, aint a man to get on in 
our connection,” said Mrs. Pigeon, with a 
toss of her head at Phoebe, who blushed over 
all her pink arms and shoulders with min- 
gled gratification and discomposure. -Mrs. 
Tozer herself received this insinuation with- 
out any violent disclaimer. “ For my part, 
I can’t say as the minister hasn’t made him- 
self very agreeable as far as we are con- 
cerned,” said the judicious woman. “ It’s 
well known as friends can’t come amiss to 
Tozer and me. Dinner or supper, we never 
can be took wrong, not being fine folks, but 
comfortable,” said the butterman’s wife, di- 
recting her eyes visibly to Mrs. Pigeon, who 
was not understood to be liberal in her 
housekeeping. Poor Phoebe was not so dis- 
criminating. When she retired into a cor- 
ner with her companions, Phoebe’s injured 
feelings disclosed themselves. “ I am sure 
he never said anything to me that he might 


not have said to any one,” she confessed to 
Maria Pigeon ; it is very hard to have peo- 
ple look so at me when perhaps he means 
nothing at all,” said Phoebe, half dejected, 
half important. Mrs. Pigeon heard the un- 
guarded confession, and made use of it 
promptly, not careful for her consistency. 

“ I said when you had all set your hearts 
on a young man, that it w^as a foolish thing 
to do,” said poor Vincent’s skilful opponent ; 
“ I said he’d be sure to come a-dangling about 
our houses, and a-trifling with the affections 
of our girls. It’ll be well if . it doesn’t come 
too true; not as I want to pretend to be 
wiser nor other folks — but I said so, as you’ll 
remember, Mrs. Brown, the very first day 
Mr. Vincent preached in Salem. I said, 
‘ He’s not bad-looking, and he’s young and 
has genteel ways, and the girls don’t know 
no better. You mark my words, if he don’t 
make some mischief in Carlingford afore all’s 
done,’ — and I only hope it wont come too 
true.” 

“ Them as is used to giddy girls, gets 
timid, as is natural,” said Mrs. Tozer ; “ it’s 
different where there is only one, and she a 
quiet one. I can’t say as ever I thought a 
young man was more taking for being a min- 
ister ; but there can’t be no doubt as it must 
be harder upon you, ma’am, as has four 
daughters, than me as has only one — and 
she a quiet one,” added the deacon’s wife, 
with a glance of maternal pride at Phoebe, 
who was just then enfolding the spare form 
of Maria Pigeon in an artless embrace, and 
who looked in her pink wreath and white 
muslin dress, “ quite the lady,” at least in 
her mother’s eyes. 

“ The quiet ones is the deep ones,” said 
Tozer, interfering, as a wise man ought, in 
a female duel, as it began to get intense. 
“ Phoebe’s my girl, and I don’t deny being 
fond of her, as is natural ; but she aint so 
innocent as not to know how things is work- 
ing, and what meaning is in some folks’ 
minds. But that’s neither here nor there, 
and it’s time as we was going away.” 

“ Not before we’ve had prayers,” said Mrs. 
Brown. “ I was surprised the first time I 
see Mr. Vincent in your house, Mr. Tozer, 
as we all parted like heathens without a 
blessing, specially being all chapel folks, and 
of one way of thinking. Our ways is differ- 
ent in this house ; and though we’re in a 
comfortless kind of condition, and no better 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


than, if we hadn’t no minister, still as there’s 
you and Mr. Pigeon here ” 

The tea-party thus concluded with a still 
more distinct sense of the pastor’s shortcom- 
ings. There was nobody to “ give prayers ” 
but Pigeon and Tozer. For all social pur- 
poses, the flock in Salem might as well have 
had no minister. The next little committee 
held in the back parlor at the butter-shop 
was still more unsatisfactory. AVhile it was 
in progress, Mr. Vincent himself appeared, 
and had to be taken solemnly up-stairs to the 
drawing-room, where there was no fire, and 
where the hum of the voices below was very 
audible, as Mrs. Tozer and Phoebe, getting 
blue with cold, sat vainly trying to occupy 
the attention of the pastor. 

“ Pa has some business people with him in 
the parlor,” explained Phoebe, who was very 
tender and sympathetic, as might be ex- 
pected ; but it did not require a very brilliant 
intelligence to divine that the business under 
discussion was the minister, even if Mrs. 
Tozer’s solemnity, and the anxious care with 
which he was conveyed past the closed door 
of the parlor, had not already filled the mind 
of the pastor with suspicion. 

“ Go down and let your pa know as Mr. 
Vincent’s here,” said Mrs. Tozer,. after this 
uncomfortable seance had lasted half an hour ; 
“ and he’s not to keep them men no Jonger 
than he can help ; and presently we’ll have 
a bit of supper — that’s what I enjoy, that is, 
Mr. Vincent ; no ceremony like there must 
be at a party, but just to take us as we are ; 
and we can’t be took amiss, Tozer and me. 
There’s always a bit of something comforta- 
ble for supper, and no friend as could be 
made so welcome as the minister,” added the 
good woman, growing more and more civil 
as she came to her wits’ end ; for had not 
Pigeon and Brown been asked to share that 
something comfortable ? For the first time 
it was a relief to the butterman’s household 
when the pastor declined the impromptu in- 
vitation, and went resolutely away. His 
ears, sharpened by suspicion, recognized the 
familiar voices in the parlor, where the door 
was ajar when he went out again. Vincent 
could not have imagined that to feel himself 
unwelcome at Tozer’s would have had any 
effect whatever upon his pre-occupied mind, 
or that to pass almost within hearing of one 
of the discussions which must inevitably be 
going on about him among the managers of 


265 

Salem, could quicken his pulse or disturb his 
composure. But it was so, notwithstanding. 
He had come out at the entreaty of his 
mother, half unwillingly, anticipating, with 
the liveliest realization of all its attendant 
circumstances, an evening spent at that big 
table in the back parlor, and something com- 
fortable to supper. He came back again 
tingling with curiosity, indignation, and sup- 
pressed defiance. The something comfortable 
had not this time been prepared for him. Ho 
was being discussed, not entertained, in the» 
parlor ; and Mrs. Tozer and Phoebe in the 
chill fine drawing-room up-stairs, where the 
gas was blazing in a vain attempt to make 
up for the want of the fire — shivering with 
cold and civility — had been as much discon- 
certed by his appearance as if they too were 
plotting against him. Mr. Vincent returned 
to his sermon not without some additional 
fire. He had spent a great deal of time over 
his sermon that week ; it was rather learned, 
and very elaborate, and a little — dull. The 
poor ministef felt very conscious of the fact, 
but could not help it. He was tempted to 
put it in the fire, and begin again, when he 
returned that Friday evening, smarting with 
those little stinging arrows of slight and in- 
jury ; but it was too late : and this was the 
beginning of the “ coorse ” which Tozer had 
laid so much store by. Vincent concluded 
the elaborate production by a few sharp sen- 
tences, which he was perfectly well aware 
did not redeem it, and explained to his 
mother, with a little ill-temper, as she thought, 
that he had changed his mind about visiting 
the Tozers that night. Mrs. Vincent did Ar- 
thur injustice as she returned to Susan’s room, 
where again matters looked very sadly ; and 
so the troubled week came to a close. 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

Sunday ! It came again, the inevitable 
morning. There are pathetic stories current 
in the world about most of the other pro- 
fessions that claim the ear of the public; 
how lawyers prepare great speeches, which 
are to open for them the gates of the iiiture, 
in the midst of the killing anxieties of life 
and poverty — how mimes and players of all 
descriptions keep the world in laughter 
while their hearts are breaking. But few 
people think of the sufi’erings of the priest, 
I w'hom, let trouble or anxiety come as they 
I please, necessity will have in the inexorable 


266 SALEM CHAPEL. 


pulpit Sunday after Sunday. So Vincent 
thought as he put on his Geneva gown in 
his little vestry, with the raw February air 
coming in at the open window, and his ser- 
mon, which was dull, lying on the table be- 
side him. It was dull — he knew it in his 
heart ; but after all the strain of passion he 
had been held at, what was to preserve him 
any more than another from the unavoidable 
lassitude and blank that followed ? Still it 
w'as not agreeable to know that Salem was 
crowded to the door, and that this sermon, 
upon which the minister looked ruefully, 
was labored and feeble, without any divine 
spark to enlighten it, or power to touch the 
hearts of other men. The consciousness 
that it was dull would, the preacher knew, 
make it duller still — its heaviness would 
affect himself as well as his audience. Still 
that was not to be helped now ; there it lay, 
ready for utterance ; and here in his Geneva 
gown, with the sound in his ears of all the 
stream of entering worshippers who were 
then arranging themselves in •the pews of 
Salem, stood the minister prepared to speak. 
There was, as Vincent divined, a great 
crowd — so great a crowd that various groups 
stood during the whole service, w^hich, by 
dint of being more labored and feeble than 
usual, was longer too. With a certain dul- 
ness of feeling, half despairing, the minister 
accomplished the preliminary devotions, and 
was just opening his Bible to begin the work 
of the day when his startled eye caught a 
most unlooked-for accession to the flock. 
Immediately before him, in the same pew 
with Mrs. Tozer and Phoebe, what was that 
beautiful vision that struck him dumb for 
the moment? Tozer himself had brought 
her in during the prayers, through the 
groups that occupied the passage, to his own 
seat, where she sat expanding her rjistling 
plumage, and looking round with all her 
natural sweetness, and a kind of delightful 
unconscious patronage and curiosity, upon 
the crowd of unknown people who were no- 
body HI Carlingford. The sight of her 
struck the young Nonconformist dumb. He 
took some moments to recover himself, ere, 
with a pang in his heart, he began his dull 
sermon. It mattered nothing to Lady 
Western what kind of a sermon he preached. 
She was not clever, and probably would 
never know the difference ; but it went to 
the young man’s heart, an additional pang 


of humiliation, to think that it was not his 
best he had to set before that unexpected 
hearer. What had brought the beauty here ? 
Vincent’s dazzled eyes did not make out for 
some time the dark spare flgure beside her, 
all sunned over with the rays of her splen- 
dor. Mrs. Tozer and Phcebe on one side, 
proud yet half affronted, contemplating with 
awe and keen observation the various par- 
ticulars of Lady Western’s dress, w'ere not 
more unlike her, reposing in her soft beauty 
within the hard wooden enclosure of the pew, 
beaming upon everybody in sweet ease and 
composure — than was the agitated restless 
face, with gleaming uncertain eyes that 
flashed everywhere, which appeared at her 
other side when Vincent came to be able to 
see. He preached his sermon with a certain 
self-disgust growing more and more intense 
every time he ventured to glance at that 
strange line of faces. The only attentive 
hearer in Tozer’s pew was Lady Western, 
who looked up at the young minister stead- 
ily with her sweet eyes, and listened with all 
the gracious propriety that belonged to her. 
The Tozers, for their part, drawn up in their 
end of the seat, gave a very divided atten- 
tion, being chiefly occupied with Lady West- 
ern ; and as for Mrs. Hilyard, the sight of 
her restlessness and nervous agitation would 
have been ‘pitiful had anybody there been 
sufficiently interested to observe it. Mr. 
Vincent’s sermon certainly did not secure 
that wandering mind. All her composure 
had deserted this strange wmman. Now and 
then she almost rose up by way apparently 
of relieving the restless fever that possessed 
her ; her nervous hands wandered among the 
books of the Tozer pew with an incessant 
motion. . Her eyes gleamed in all directions 
with a w'istful anxiety and suspicion. All 
this went on while Vincent preached his ser- 
m^Tn ; he had no eyes for the other people 
in the place. Now and then the young man 
became rhetorical, and threw in here and 
there a wild flourish to break the deadness 
of his discourse, with no success, as he saw. 
He read tedium in all the lines of faces be- 
fore him as he came to a close with a dull 
despair — in all the faces except that sweet 
face never disturbed out of its lovely calm 
of attention, which would have listened to 
the Dissenting minister quite as calmly had 
he preached like Paul. With a sensation 
that this was one of the critical moments of 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 267 


his fate, and that he had failed in it, Vin- 
cent dropped into his seat in exhaustion and 
self-disgust, while his hearers got up to sing 
their hymn. It was at this moment that 
Tozer walked up through the aisle, steadily, 
yet with his heart beating louder than usual, 
and ascended the pulpit stairs to give forth 
that intimation which had been agreed upon 
in the back parlor on Friday. The minister 
was disturbed in his uncomfortable repose 
by the entrance of the deacon into the pul- 
pit, where the worthy butterman seated him- 
self by Vincent’s side. The unconscious 
congregation sang its hymn, while the Non- 
conformist, rousing up, looked with sur- 
prised eyes upon his unexpected companion ; 
yet there were bosoms in the flock which 
owned a thrill of emotion as Tozer’s sub- 
stantial person partially disappeared from 
view behind the crimson cushion. Phoebe 
left off singing, and subsided into tears and 
her seat. Mrs. Pigeon lifted up her voice 
and expanded her person ; meanwhile Tozer 
whispered ominously, with a certain agita- 
tion, in his pastor’s ear, — 

“ It’s three \vords of an intimation as I’d 
like to give — nothing of no importance ; a 
meeting of the flock as some of us would 
like to call, if it’s quite agreeable — noth- 
ing as you need mind, Mr. Vincent. We 
wouldn’t go for to occupy your time, sir, at- 
tending of it. There wasn’t no opportunity 
to tell you before. I’ll give it out, if it’s 
agreeable,” said Tozer, with hesitation — ^ or 

if you’d rather ” 

“ Give it to me,” said the minister quickly. 
He took the paper out of the butterman’s 
hand, who drev/ back uncomfortable and 
embarrassed, wishing himself anywhere in 
the world but in the pulpit, from which that 
revolutionary document menaced the startled 
pastor with summary deposition. It was^a 
sufficiently simple notice of a meeting to be 
held on the following Monday evening, in 
the schoolroom, which was the scene of all 
the tea and other meetings of Salem. This, 
however, was no tea-meeting. Vincent drew 
his breath hard, and changed color, as he 
bent down under the shadow of the pulpit- 
cushion and the big Bible, and read this 
dangerous document. Meanwhile the flock 
sang their hymn, to which Tozer, much dis- 
composed, added a few broken notes of trem- 
ulous bass as he sat by the minister’s side. 
When Mr. Vincent again raised his head, 


and sat erect with the notice in his hand, 
the troubled deacon made vain attempts to 
catch his eye, and ask what was to be done. 
The Nonconformist made no reply to these 
telegraphic communications. When the 
singing was ended he rose, ^11 with the 
paper in his hand, and faced the congrega- 
tion, where he no longer saw one face with 
a vague background of innumerable other 
faces, but had suddenly woke up to behold 
his battle-ground and field of warfare, in 
which everything dear to him was suddenly 
assailed. Unawares the assembled people, 
who had received no special sensation from 
the sermon, woke up also at the sight of 
Vincent’s face. He read the notice to them 
with a voice that tingled through the place ; 
then he paused. “ This meeting is one of 
which I have not been informed,” said Vin- 
cent. “ It is one which I am not asked to 
attend. I invite you to it, all who are here 
present ; and I invite you thereafter,” con- 
tinued the minister, with an unconscious 
elevation of his head, “ to meet me on the 
following evening to hear what I have to say 
to you. Probably the business will be much 
the same on both occasions, but it will be 
approached from different sides of the ques- 
tion. I invite you to meet on Monday, ac- 
cording to this notice ; and I invite you on 
Tuesday, at the same place and hour, to 
meet me.” 

Vincent did not hear the audible hum and 
buzz of surprise and excitement which ran 
through his startled flock. He did not pay 
much attention to what Tozer said to him 
when all was over. He lingered in his vestry, 
taking off his gown, until he could hear Lady 
Western’s carriage drive off after an interval 
of lingering. The young Dowager had gone 
out slowly, thinking to see him, and comfort 
him with a compliment about his sermon, 
concerning the quality of which she w’as not 
critical. She was sorry in her kind heart to 
perceive his troubled looks, and to discover 
that somehow, she could not quite understand 
how, something annoying and uneii^ected 
had occurred to him. And then this uneasy 
companion, to whom he had bound her, and 
whose strange agitation and wonderful change 
of aspect Lady Western could in no way ac- 
count for. But the carriage rolled away at 
last, not without reluctance, while the min- 
ister still remained in his vestry. Then he 
hurried home, speaking to no one. Mrs. 


268 SALEM 

Vincent did not understand her son all day, 
nor even next morning, when he might have 
been supposed to have had time to calm down. 
He was very silent, but no longer dreamy or 
languid, or lost in the vague discontent and 
dejection wkli which she was familiar. On 
the contrary, the minister had woke up out of 
that abstraction. He was wonderfully alert, 
open-eyed, full of occupation. When he sat 
down to his w’riting-table it was not to muse, 
with his pen in his languid fingers, now and 
then putting down a sentence, but to write 
straight forward with evident fire and em- 
phasis. He was very tender to herself, but 
he did not tell her anything. Some new cloud 
had doubtless appeared on the fii’mament 
where there was little need for any further 
clouds. The widow rose on the Monday 
morning with a presentiment of calamity on 
her mind — rose from the bed in Susan’s room 
which she occupied for two or three hours in 
the night, sometimes snatching a momentary 
sleep, which Susan’s smallest movement inter- 
rupted. Her heart was rent in two between 
her children. She went from Susan’s bed- 
side, where her daughter lay in dumb apathy, 
not to be roused by anything that could be 
said or done, to minister wistfully at Arthur’s 
breakfast, which, with her heart in her throat, 
the widow made a pitiful pretence of shar- 
ing. She could not ask him questions. She 
was silent, too, in her great love and sorrow. 
Seeing some new trouble approaching — wist- 
fully gazing into the blank slues before her, to 
discover, if that were possible, without an- 
noying Arthur, or compromising him, what it 
was ; but rather than compromise or annoy 
him, contenting herself not to know — the 
greatest stretch of endurance to which as yet 
she had constrained her spirit. 

Arthur did not go out all that Monday. 
Even in the house a certain excitement was 
visible to Mrs. Vincent’s keen observation. 
The landlady herself made her appearance in 
tears to clear away the remains of the min- 
ister’s dinner. “ I hope, sir, as you don’t 
think what’s past and gone has made no dif- 
ference on me,” said that tearful woman in 
Mrs. Vincent’s hearing ; “it aint me as 
would ever give my support to such doings.” 
.When the widow asked. “What doings?” 
Arthur only smiled and made some half-articu- 
late remark about gossip, which his mother of 
course treated at its true value. As the dark 
wintry afternoon closed in, Mrs. Vincent’s 


CHAPEL. 

anxiety increased under the influence of the 
landlady’s Sunday dress, in which she was 
visible progressing about the passages, and 
warning her husband to mind he wasn’t late. 
At last Mrs. Tufton called, and the minister’s 
mother came to a true understanding of the 
state of affairs. Mrs. Tufton was unsettled 
and nervous, filled with a not unexhilarating 
excitement, and all the heat of partisanship. 

“ Don’t you take on,” said the good little 
woman ; “ Mr. Tufton is going to the meet- 
ing to tell them his sentiments about his 
young brother. My dear, they will never 
go against what Mr. Tufton says : and if I 
should mount upon the platform and make a 
speech myself, there sha’n’t be anything done 
that could vex you ; for we always said he 
Was a precious young man, and a credit to 
the connection ; and it would be a disgrace 
to us all to let the Pigeons, or such people, 
have it all their own way.” Mrs. Vincent 
managed to ascertain all the particulars from 
the old minister’s wife. When she was 
gone, the widow sat down a little, with a very 
desolate heart, to think it all over. Arthur, 
with a new light in his eye, and determina- 1 
tion in his face, was writing in the sitting- _ 
room ; but Arthur’s mother could not sit still 
as he did, and imagine the scene in the Sa- 
lem schoolroom, and how everybody dis- 
cussed and sat upon her boy, and decided all 
the momentous future of his young life in 
this private inquisition. ■ She went back, 
however, beside him, and poured out a cup 
of tea for him, and managed to swallow one 
for herself, talking about Susan and indifier- 
ent household matters, while the evening wore 
on and the hour of the meeting approached. 

A little before that hour Mrs. Vincent left 
Arthur, with an injunction not to come into 
the sick-room that evening until she sent for 
him, as she thought Susan would sleep. As 
she left the room the landlady went down- ! 
stairs, gorgeous in her best bonnet and shawl, [ 
with all the personal satisfaction which a 
member of a flock naturally feels when called 
to a bed of justice to decide the future des- '\ 
tiny of its head. The minister’s fate was in 
the hands of his people ; and it was with a 
pleasurable sensation that, from every house 
throughout Grove Street and the adjacent i 
regions, the good people were going forth ' 
to decide it. As for the minister’s mother, 
she went softly back to Susan’s room, where 
•the nurse, who was Mrs. Vincent’s assistant, 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


had taken her place. “ She looks just the 
same,” said the poor mother. “ Just the 
same,” echoed the attendant. “ I don’t 
think myself as there’ll be no change un- 
til ” Mrs. Vincent turned away silently 

in her anguish which she dared not indulge. 
She wrapped herself in a black shawl, and 
took out the thick veil of crape which she 
had worn in her first mourning. Nobody 
could recognize her under that screen. But 
it was with a pang that she tied that sign of 
woe over her pale face. The touch of the 
crape made her shiver. Perhaps she was 
but forestalling the mourning which in her 
age and weakness, she might have to renew 
again. With such thoughts she went softly 
through the wintry lighted streets towards 
Salem. As she approached the door, groups 
of people going the same way brushed past 
her through Grove Street. Lively people, 
talking with animation, pleased with this 
new excitement, declaring, sometimes so 
loudly that she could hear them as they 
passed, what side they wer-e on, and that 
they, for their part, were going to vote for 


269 

the minister to give him another trial. The 
little figure in those black robes, with anx- 
ious looks shrouded under the crape veil, 
went on among the rest to the Salem school- 
room. She took her seat close to the door, 
and saw Tozer and Pigeon, and the rest of 
the deacons, getting upon the platform, 
where on occasions more festive the chair- 
man and the leading people had tea. The 
widow looked through her veil at the butter- 
man and the poulterer with one keen pang 
of resentment, of which she repented in- 
stantly. She did not despise them as another 
might have done. They were the constituted 
authorities of the place, and her son’s fate, 
his reputation, his young life, all that he had 
or could hope for in the world, was in their 
hands. The decision of the highest author- 
ities in the land was not so important to Ar- 
thur as that of the poulterer and the butter- 
man. There they stood, ready to open their 
session, their inquisition, their solemn tribu- 
nal. The widow drew her veil close, and 
clasped her hands together to sustain herself. 
It was Pigeon who was about to speak. 


270 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


PART XI.— CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Mr. Pigeon was a heavy orator, he was 
a tall' man, badly put together, with a hol- 
low crease across his waistcoat, which looked 
very much as if he might be folded in two, 
and so laid away out of mischief. His arms 
moved foolishly about in the agonies of ora- 
tory, as if they did not belong to him ; but 
he did not look absurd through Mrs. Vin- 
cent’s crape veil, as she sat gazing at the 
platform on which he stood, and taking in 
with eager ears every syllable that came 
from his lips. Mr. Pigeon said it was Mr. 
Vincent as they had come there to discuss 
that night. The managers had made up 
their minds as it was a dooty to lay things 
before the flock. Mr. Vincent was but a 
young man, and most in that congregation 
was ready to make allowances ; and as for 
misfortunes as might have happened to him, 
he wasn’t a-going to lay that to the pastor’s 
charge, nor take no mean advantages. He 
was for judging a man on his merits, he was. 
If they was to take Mr. Vincent on his mer- 
its without no prejudice, they would And as 
he hadn’t carried out the expectations as 
was formed of him. Not as there was any- 
thing to be said against his preaching, his 
preaching was well enough, though it wasn’t 
to call rousing up, which was what most 
folks wanted. There wasn’t no desire on the 
part of the managers to object to his preach- 
ing; he had ought to have preached well, that 
was the truth, for every one as had been con- 
nected with Salem in Mr. Tufton’s time 
knew as there was a deal of difference be- 
tAveen the new pastor and the old pastor, as 
far as the work of a congregation went. As 
for Pigeon’s own feelings, he would have 
held his peace cheerful, if his dooty had per- 
mitted him, or if he had seen as it was for 
the good of the connection. But things was 
come to that pass in Salem as a man hadn’t 
ought to mind his own feelings, but had to 
do his dooty, if he was to be took to the 
stake for it. And them were his circum- 
stances, as many a one as he had spoken to 
in private could say, if they was to speak 

up- ^ 

To all this Mrs. Vincent listened with the 
profoundest attention behind her veil. The 
schoolroom was very full of people — almost 
as full as on the last memorable tea-party ; 
but the square lines of the gas-burners, 
coming down with two flaring lights erch 


from the low roof, were veiled with no fes- 
toons this time, and threw an unmitigated 
glare upon the people, all in their dark win- 
ter dresses, without any attempt at special 
embellishment. Mrs. Pigeon was in the fore- 
ground, on a side-bench near the platform, 
very visible to the minister’s mother, nod- 
ding her head and giving triumphant glances 
around now and then to point her husband’s 
confused sentences. Mrs. Pigeon had her 
daughters spread out on one side of her, all 
in their best bonnets, and at the corner of 
the same seat sat little Mrsi Tufton, who 
shook her charitable head when thf* poulter- 
er’s wife nodded hers, and put her handker- 
chief to her eyes now and then, as she gazed ' 
up at the platform, not without a certain 
womanly misgiving as to how her husband 
was going to conduct himself. The Tozers 
had taken up their position opposite. Mrs. 
Tozer and her daughter had all the appear- 
ance of being in great spirits, especially 
Phoebe, who seemed scarcely able to contain 
her amusement as Mr. Pigeon went on. All 
this Mrs. Vincent saw as clearly as in a pic- 
ture through the dark fold’s of her veil. She 
sat back as far as she could into the shade, * 
and pressed her hands close together, and was 
noways amused, but listened with as profound 
an ache of anxiety in her heart as if Pigeon 
had been the Lord Chancellor. As for the 
audience in general, it showed some signs 
of weariness as the poulterer stumbled on | 
through his confused speech ; and not a rest- 
less gesture, not a suppressed yaAvn in the 
place, but was apparent to the minister’s | 
mother. The heart in her troubled bosom i 
beat steadier as she gazed ; certainly no vio- | 
lent sentiment actuated the good people of ' 
Salem as they sat staring with calm eyes at ^ 
the speaker. Mrs. Vincent knew how a con- i 
gregation looked when it was thoroughly ! 
excited and up in arms against its head, i 
She drew a long breath of relief, and suffered j 
the tight clasp of her hands to relax a lit- j 
tie. There was surely no popular passion 
there. | 

And then Mr. Tufton got up, swaying 1 
heavily with his large uncertain old figure 
over the table. The old minister sawed the | 
air with his white fat hand after he had said | 
“ My beloved brethren ” twice over ; and 
little Mrs. Tufton, sitting below in her im- i 
patience and anxiety lest he should not ac- 
quit himself well, dropped her handkerchief i 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. . 271 


and disappeared after it, ■ while Mrs. Vincent 
erected herself under the shadow of her veil. 
Mr. Tufton did his young brother no good. 
He was so sympathetic over the misfortunes 
that had befallen Vincent’s family, that bit- 
ter tears came to the widow’s eyes, and her 
hands once more tightened in a silent strain 
of self-support. While the old minister im- 
pressed upon his audience the duty of bear- 
ing with his dear young brother, and being 
indulgent to the faults of his youth, it was 
all the poor mother could do to keep silent, 
to stifle down tlie indignant sob in her heart, 
and keep steady in her seat. Perhaps it was 
some breath of anguish escaping from her un- 
awares that drew towards her the restless gleam- 
ing eyes of another strange spectator there. 
That restless ghost of a woman ! — all shrunken, 
gleaming, ghastly — her eyes looking all about 
in an obliquity of furtive glances, fearing yet 
daring everything. When she found Mrs. 
Vincent out, she fixed her suspicious, des- 
perate gaze upon the crape veil which hid 
the widow’s face. The deacons of Salem 
were to Mrs. Hilyard but so many wretched 
masquers playing a rude game among the 
dreadful wastes of life, of which these poor 
fools were ignorant. Sometimes she watched 
them with a reflection of her old amusement 
— oftener, pursued by her own tyrannical 
fancy and the wild restlessness which had 
brought her here, forgot altogether where 
she was. But Mrs. Vincent’s sigh, which 
breathed unutterable things — the steady 
fixed composure of that little figure while 
the old minister maundered on with his con- 
dolences, his regrets, his self-glorification 
over the interest he had taken in his dear 
young brother, and the advice he had given 
bini — could not miss the universal scrutiny 
of this strange woman’s eyes. She divined, 
with a sudden awakening of the keen intelli- 
gence which was half crazed by this time, 
yet vivid as ever, the state of mind in which 
the widow was. With a half-audible cry the 
Back Grove Street needlewoman gazed at 
the minister’s mother ; in paignant trouble, 
anxiety, indignant distress — clasping her 
tender hands together yet again to control 
the impatience, the resentment, the aching 
mortification and injury with which she heard 
all this maudlin pity overflowing the name 
of her boy — yet, ah! what a world apart 
from the guilty and desp'erate spirit which 
sat there gazing like Dives at Lazarus. Mrs. 


Hilyard slid out of her seat with a rapid, 
stealthy movement, and placed herself un- 
seen by the widow’s side. The miserable 
woman put forth her furtive hand and took 
hold of the black gown — the old black silk 
gown, so well worn and long preserved. 
Mrs. Vincent started a little, looked at her, 
gave her a slight half-spasmodic nod of rec- 
ognition, and returned to her own absorb- 
ing interest. The interruption made her 
raise her head a little higher under the" veil, 
that not even this stranger might imagine 
Arthur’s mother to be affected by what was 
going on. For everything else, Mrs. Hil- 
yard had disappeared out of the widow’s 
memory. She was thinking only of her son. 

As for the other minister’s wife. Poor Mrs. 
Tufton’s handkerchief dropped a great many 
times during her husband’s speech. Oh, if 
these blundering men, who mismanage mat- 
ters so, could but be made to hold their 
peace ! Tears of vexation and distress came 
into the eyes of the good little woman. Mr. 
Tufton meant to do exactly what was right ; 
she knew he did ; but to sit still and hear 
him making such a muddle of it all I Such 
penalties have to be borne by dutiful wives. 
She had to smile feebly, when he concluded, 
to somebody who turned round to congratu- 
late her upon the minister’s beautiful speech. 
The beautiful speech had done poor Vincent 
a great deal more harm than Pigeon’s ora- 
tion. Salem folks, being appealed to on 
this side, found out that they had, after all, 
made great allowances for their minister, 
and that he had not on his part shown a due 
sense of their indulgence. Somebody else 
immediately after went on in the same 
strain : a little commotion began to rise in 
the quiet meeting. “ Mr. Tufton’s ’it it,” 
said a malcontent near Mrs. Vincent ; 
“ we’ve been a deal too generous, that’s 
what we’ve been ; and he’s turned on us.” 
“ He was always too high for my fancy,” 
said another. “ It aint the thing for a pas- 
tor to be high-minded ; and them lectures 
and things was never nothing but vanity ; 
and so I always said.” Mrs. Vincent smiled 
a wan smile to herself under her veil. She 
refused to let the long breath escape from 
her breast in the form of a sigh. She sat 
fast, upright, holding her hands clasped. 
Things were going against Arthur. Unseen 
among all his foes, with an answer, and 
more than an answer, to everything they 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


272 

said, burning in dumb restrained eloquence | gentlemen, aint no gi-umbling nor reflecting * 

in her breast, his mother held up his ban- upon them as is absent and can’t defend ; 

ner. One at least was there who knew Ar- ! themselves. I’ve got two things to say — 
thur, and lifted up a dumb protest on his ! first, as I think you haven’t been called to- 


behalf to earth and heaven. She felt with 
an uneasy half-consciousness that some 
haunting shadow was by her side, and was 
even vaguely aware of the hold upon her 
dress, but had no leisure in her mind for 
anything but the progress of this contest, 
and ' the gradual overthrow, accomplishing 
before her eyes, of Arthur’s cause. 

It was at this moment that Tozer rose up 
to make that famous speech which has im- 
mortalized him in the connection, and for 
which the Homerton students, in their en- 
thusiasm, voted a piece of plate to the wor- 
thy butterman. The face of the Salem 
firmament was cloudy when Tozer rose ; 
suggestions of discontent were surging 
among the audience. Heads of families 
were stretching over the benches to confide 
to each other how long it was since they had 
seen the minister ; how he had never visited 
as he ought ; and how desirable “ a change ” 
might prove. Spiteful glances of triumph 
sought poor Phoebe and her mother upon 
their bench, where the two began to fail in 
their courage, and laughed no longer. A 
crisis was approaching. Mrs. Tufton picked 
up her handkerchief, and sat erect, with a 
frightened face ; she, too, knew the symp- 
toms of the coming storm. 

Such were the circumstances under which 
Tozer rose in the pastor’s defence. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Tozer, — 
“ and Mr. Chairman, as I ought to have 
said first, if this meeting had been consti- 
stuted like most other meetings have been 
in Salem ; but, my friends, we haven’t met 
not in what I would call an honest and 
straightforward way, and consequently we 
aint in order, not as a free assembly shpuld 
be, as has met to know its own mind, and 
not to be dictated to by nobody. There are 
them as are ready to dictate m every body 
of men. I don’t name no names j I don’t 
make no suggestions; what Prn a-stating 
of is a general truth as is well known to 
every one as has studied philosophy. I don’t 
come here pretending as I’m a learned man, 
nor one as knows better nor my neighbors. 
I’m a plain man, as likes everything fair and 
above board, and is content when I’m well 
ofil What I’ve got to say to you, ladies and 


gether not in an open way ; and, second, 
that I think us Salem folks, as ought to 
know better, is a-quarrelling with our bread- 
and-butter, and don’t know when we’re well 
off! 

“ Yes, ladies and gentlemen ! them’s my 
sentiments ! we donH know when wdre tcell 
off! and if we don’t mind, we’ll find out how 
matters really is when we’ve, been and dis- 
gusted the pastor, and drove him to throw 
it all up. Such a thing aint uncommon; 
many and many’s the one in our connection 
as has come out for the ministry, meaning 
nothing but to stick to it, and has been drove 
by them as is to be found in every fiock — 
them as is always ready to dictate — to throw 
it all up. My friends, the pastor as is the 
subject of this meeting ” — here Tozer sank 
his voice, and looked round wdth a certain 
solemnity — “ Mr. Vincent, ladies and gen- 
tlemen, as has doubled the seat-holders in 
Salem in six months’ work, and, I make bold 
to say, brought one-half of you as is here to 
be regular at chajiel, and take an interest in 
the connection — Mr. Vincent, I say, as you’re 
all collected here to knock down in the dark, 
if so be as you are willing to be dictated to 
— the same, ladies and gentlemen, as we’re 
a-discussing of to-night — told us all, — it 
aint so very long ago, in the crowdedest 
meeting as I ever see, in the biggest public 
hail in Carlingford — as w^e weren’t keeping 
up to the standard of the old Nonconform- 
ists, nor showing, as w'e ought, what a vol- 
untary church could do. It aint pleasant to 
hear of, for us as thinks a deal of ourselves ; 
but that is what the pastor said, and there 
was not a man as could contradict it. Now, 
I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, what is the 
reason ? It’s all along of this as we’re do- 
ing to-night. ' We’ve got a precious young 
man, as Mr. Tufton tells you, and a clever 
young man, as nobody tries for to deny ; 
and there aint a single blessed reason on 
this earth why he shouldn’t go on as he’s 
been a-doing, till, Salem bein’ crowded out 
to the doors (as it’s been two Sundays back), 
we’d have had to build a new chapel, and 
took a place in our connection as we’ve never 
yet took in Carlingford ! ” 

Mr. Tozer paused to wipe his heated fore- 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


273 

head, and ease his excited bosom with a long i in the world as it ought, here’s some one as 
breath ; his audience paused with him, tak- I jumps up and says, ‘ The pastor don’t come 
ing breath with the orator in a slight univer- to see me,’ says he — ‘ the pastor don’t do his 

dooty — he aint the man for Salem.’ And them 
as is always in every flock ready to do a mis- 
chief, takes it up ; and there’s talk of a 
change, and meetings is called, and — here 
■we are ! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, here 
his head slowly. “ Them as is always a-find- i -we are ! We’ve called a meeting, all in the 
ing fault, and always a-setting up to dictate, 1 dark, and give him no chance of defending 
has set their faces again’ all that. It’s the j hisself ; and them as is at the head of this 
way of some folks in our connection, ladies | movement is calling upon us to dismiss Mr. 
and gentlemen ; a minister aint to be al- Vincent. But let me tell you,” continued 


sal rustle, which is the most genuine applause. 
The worthy butterman resumed in a lowered 
and emphatic tone. 

“ But it aint to be,” said Tozer, looking 
round him with a tragic frown, and shaking 


lowed to go on building up a chapel, and 
making hisself useful in the world. He 
aint to be left alone to do his dooty as his 
best friends approve. He’s to be took down 
out of his pulpit, and took to pieces be- 
hind his back, and made a talk and a scan- 
dal of to the whole connection ! It’s not his 
preaching as he’s judged by, nor his dooty 
to the sick and dyin’, nor any of them things 
as he w'as called to be pastor for ; but it’s 
if he’s seen going to one house more nor an- 
other, or if he calls often enough on this one 
or t’other, and goes to all the tea-drinkings. 
My opinion is,” said Tozer, suddenly break- 
ing off into jocularity, “ as a young man as 
maybe isn’t a marrying man, and anyhow 
can’t marry more nor one, aint in the safest 
place at Salem tea-drinkings ; but that’s nei- 
ther here nor there. If the ladies haven’t no 


Tozer, loAvering his voice with a dramatic 
intuition, and shaking his forefinger still 
more emphatically in the face of the startled 
audience, “ that this aint no question of dis- 
missing Mr. Vincent ; it’s a matter of dis- 
gusting Mr. Vincent, that’s what it is — it’s a 
matter of turning another promising young 
man away from the connection, and driving 
him to throw' it all up. You mark what I 
say. It’s what we’re doing most places, us 
Dissenters ; them as is talented and prom- 
isin’, and can get a better living working for 
the w'orld than working for the chapel, and 
wont give in to be worried about calling here 
and calling there — we’re a-driving of them 
out of the connection, that’s what we’re do- 
ing ! I could reckon up as many as six or 
seven as has been drove off already ; and I 
ask you, ladies and gentlemen, what’s the 


pity, us men can’t do nothing in that mat- ! good of subscribing and keeping up of col- 
ter ; but what I say is this,” continued the | leges and so forth, if that’s how your a-going 
butterman, once more becoming solemn ; to serve every clever young man as trusts 
» to go for to judge the pastor of a flock, hisself to be your pastor ? I’m a man as 

' don’t feel no shame to say that the minister, 
being took up with his family affairs and his 
studies, has been for weeks as he hasn’t 
crossed my door ; but am I that poor-spir- 
ited as I would drive away a young man as is 
one of the best preachers in the connection, 
because he don’t come, not every day, to see 
me ? No, my friends ! them as w’ould ever 
suspect such a thing of me don’t know who 
they’re dealing with ; and I tell you, ladies 
and gentlemen, as this is a question as must 
come home to every one of your bosoms. 
Them as is so set upon their own way that 
they can’t hear reason— or them as is led 
away by folks as like to dictate— may give 
their voice again’ the minister, if so be as 
they think fit ; but as for me, and them as 
stands by me, I aint a-going to give in to no 
such tyranny I It shall never be said in our 
18 


not by the dooty he does to his flock, but by 
the times he calls at one house or another, 
and the way he makes hisself agreeable at 
one place or another, aint a thing to be done 
by them as prides themselves on being Chris- 
tians and Dissenters. It’s not like Christians 

and if it’s like Dissenters the more’s the 

pity. It’s mean, that’s what it is,” cried Tozer, 
with fine scorn ; “ it’s like a parcel of old 
women, if the ladies wont mind me saying 
It’s beneath us as has liberty of con- 


80 . 


science to fight for, and has to set an exam- 
ple before the Church folks as don’t know 
no better. But it’s what is done in our con- 
nection,” added the good deacon with pathos, 
shaking his forefinger mournfully at the 
crowd. “ When there’s a young man as is 
clever and talented, and fills a chapel, and 
gives the connection a chance of standing up 
CnHONICLES OF CAKLINGFOKD. 


274 SALEM CHAPEL. 


connection as a clever young man was drove 
away from Carlingford, and I had a part in 
it. There’s the credit o’ the denomination to 
keep up among the Church folks — and there’s 
the chapel to fill, as never had half the sittings 
let before — and there’s Mr. Vincent, as is the 
cleverest young man I ever see in our pulpit, 
to be kep’ in the connection ; and there aint 
no man living as shall dictate to me or them 
as stands by me! Them as is content to 
lose the best preaching within a hundred 
miles, because the minister don’t call on two 
or three families in Salem, not as often as 
they would like to see him,” said Tozer, with 
trenchant sarcasm, “ can put down their 
names again’ Mr. Vincent ; but for me, and 
them as stands by me, W'e aint a-going to 
give in to no such dictation : we aint a-going 
to set up ourselves against the spread of the 
Gospel, and the credit o’ the connection, and 
toleration and freedom of conscience, as we’re 
bound to fight for ! If the pastor don’t make 
hisself agreeable, I can put up with that — I 
can ; but I aint a-going to see* a clever young 
man drove away from Salem, and the sittings 
vacant, and the chapel falling to ruin, and , 
the Church folks a-laughing and a-jeering at 
us, not for all the deacons in the connection, 
nor any man in Carlingford. And this I say 
for myself and for all as stands by me ! ” 

The last sentence was lost in thunders of 
applause. The “ Salem folks ” stamped with 
their feet, knocked the floor with their um- 
brellas, clapped their hands in a. furore of 
enthusiasm and sympathy. Their pride was 
appealed to ; nobody could bear the impu- 
tation of being numbered among the two or 
three to whom the minister had not paid suf- 
ficient attention. All the adherents of the 
Pigeon party deserted that luckless family 
sitting prominent upon their bench, with old 
Mrs. Tufton at the corner joining as heartily 
as her overshoes would permit in the gen- 
eral commotion. There they sat, a pale line 
of faces, separated, by their looks of dismay 
and irresponsive silence, from the applaud- 
ing crowd, cruelly identified as “ them as is 
always ready to dictate.” The occasion was 
indeed a grand one, had the leader of the 
opposition been equal to it j but Mrs. Pigeon 
only sat and stared at the new turn of affairs 
with a hysterical smile of spite and disap- 
pointment fixed on her face. Before the 
cheers died away, a young man — one of the 
young Men’s Christian Association con- 


nected with Salem— jumped up on a bench 
in the midst of the assembly, and clinched 
the speech of Tozer. He told the admiring 
meeting that he had been brought up in the 
connection, but had strayed away into care- 
lessness and neglect — and when he went 
anywhere at all on Sundays, went to church 
like one of the common multitude, till Mr. 
Vincent’s lecture on Church and State 
opened his eyes, and brought him to better 
knowledge. Then came another, and . an- 
other. Mrs. Vincent, sitting on the back 
seat with her veil over her face, did not hear 
what they said. The heroic little soul had 
broken down, and was lost in silent tears, 
and utterances in her heart of thanksgiving, 
deeper than words. No comic aspect of the 
scene appeared to her ; she was not moved 
by its vulgarity or oddity. It was deliver- 
ance and safety to the minister’s mother. 
Her son’s honor and his living were alike 
safe, and his people had stood by Arthur. 
She sat for some time longer, lost in that 
haze of comfort and relief, afraid to move 
lest perhaps something untoward might still 
occur to change this happy state of affairs — 
keen to detect any evil symptom, if such 
should occur, but unable to follow with any 
exactness the course of those addresses 
which still continued to be made in her 
hearing. She was not quite sure, indeed, 
whether anybody had spoken after Tozer, 
when, with a step much less firm than on 
her entrance, she went forth, wiping the 
tears that blinded her from under her veil, 
into the darkness and quiet of the street 
outside. But she knew that “ resolutions ” 
of support and sympathy had been carried 
by acclamation, and that somebody was de- 
puted from the flock to assure the minister 
of its approval, and to ofier him the new 
lease of popularity thus won for him in Sa- 
lem. Mrs. Vincent waited to hear no more. 
She got up softly and went forth on noise- 
less, weary feet, which faltered, now that 
her anxiety was over, with fatigue and agi- 
tation. Thankful to the bottom of her heart, 
yet at the same time doubly worn out with 
that deliverance, confused with the lights, 
the noises, and the excitement of the scene, 
and beginning already to take up her other 
burden, and to wonder by times, waking up 
with sharp touches of renewed anguish, how 
she might find Susan, and whether “ any 
change” had appeared in her other child. 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 275 


It was thus that the great Salem congrega- 
tional meeting, so renowrcd in the connec- 
tion, ended for the minister’s mother. She 
left them still making speeches when she 
emerged into Grove Street. The political 
effect of Tozer’s address, or the influence 
which his new doctrine might have on the 
denomination, did not occur to Mrs. Vin- 
cent. She was thinking only of Arthur. 
Not even the darker human misery by her 
side had power to break through her pre- 
occupation. How the gentle little w'oman 
had shaken off that anxious hand which 
grasped her old black dress, she never knew 
herself, nor could any one tell ; somehow 
she had done it : alone, as she entered, she 
went away again — secret, but not • clandes- 
tine, under that veil of her widowhood. She 
put it up from her face when she got into the 
street, and wiped her tears off with a trem- 
bling, joyful hand. She could not see her 
way clearly for those tears of joy. When 
they were dried, and the crape shadow put 
back from her face, Mrs. Vincent looked up 
Grove Street, where her road lay in the 
darkness, broken by those flickering lamps. 
It was a windy night, and Dr. Hider’s drag 
went up past her rapidly, carrying the doc- 
tor home from some late visit, and recalling 
her thoughts to her own patient whom she 
had left so long. She quickened her trem- 
ulous steps as Dr. Hiderr disappeared in the 
darkness ; but almost before she had got 
beyond the last echoes of the Salem meeting, 
that shadow of darker woe and misery than 
any the poor mother wist of, was again by 
^Irs. Vincent’s side. 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

“ You are not able to walk so fast,” said 
Mrs. Hilyard, coming up to the widow as 
she crossed over to the darker side of Grove 
Street, just where the house of the Misses 
Hemmings turned its lighted staircase-win- 
dow to the street ; “ and it will not harm 
you to let me speak to you. Once you of- 
fered me your hand, and would have gone 
with me. It is a long, long time ago— ages 
since — but I remember it. I do not come 
after you for nothing. Let me speak. You 
said you were a — a minister’s wife, and 
knew human nature,” she continued, with a 
certain pause of reverence, and at the same 
time a gleam of amusement, varying for a 
moment the blank and breathless voice in 


which she had spoken. “ I want your ad- 
vice.” 

Mrs. Vincent, who had paused with an, 
uncomfortable sensation of being pursued, 
recovered herself a little during this ad- 
dress. The minister’s mother had no heart 
to linger and talk to any one at that mo- 
ment, after all the excitement of the even- 
ing, with her fatigued frame and occupied 
mind ; but still she was the minister’s 
mother, as ready and prepared as Arthur 
himself ought to have been, to hear any- 
thing that any of the flock might have to 
say to her, and to give all the benefit of her 
experience to anybody connected with Salem 
who might be in trouble. “ I beg your par- 
don,” said Mrs. Vincent ; “ my daughter is 
ill — that is why I was making so much 
haste ; but I am sure, if I can be of any use 
to any member of — I mean to any of my 
son’s friends” — she concluded, rather ab- 
ruptly. She did not remember much about 
this woman, who was strangely unlike the 
other people in Salem. When was that time 
in which they had met before ? The wid- 
ow’s mind had been so swept by the whirl- 
wind of events and emotions, that she re- 
membered only dimly how and where it was 
she had formerly seen her strange compan- 
ion. 

“ Your daughter is ill ? ” said Mrs. Hil- 
yard ; “ that is how trouble happens’to you. 
You are a good woman ; you don’t interfere 
in God’s business ; and this is how your 
trouble comes. You can nurse her, and be 
about her bed ; and when she wakes up, it 
is to see you and be grateful to you. But 
my child,” she said, touching the widow’s 
arm suddenly with her hand, and suppress- 
ing painfully a shrill tone of anguish in her 
voice which would break through, “does 
not know me. She opens her blue eyes— 
they are not even my eyes— they are Alice’s 
eyes, who has no right to my child— and 
looks at me as if I were a stranger ; and 
for all this time, since I parted with her, I 
have not heard— I do not know where she 
is. Hush, hush, hush ! she went on, speak- 
ing to herself, “ to think thdt this is me, 
and that I should break down so at last. A 
woman has not soul enough to subdue her 
nerves forever. But this is not what I 
wanted to say to you. I gave Miss Smith 
your son’s address- ” 

Having said this, she paused, and looked 


276 SALEM CHAPEL. 


anxiously at the widow, who looked at her 
also in the windy gleams of lamplight with 
more and more perplexity. “ Who is Miss 
Smith ? ” asked poor Mrs. Vincent. “ Who 
are— you? Indeed, I am very sorry to 
seem rude ; but my mind has been so much 
occupied. Arthur, of course, would know 
if he were here, but Susan’s illness has 
taken up all my thouglrts j and — I beg 
your pardon — she may want me even now,” 
she continued, quickening her steps. Even 
the courtesy due to one of the flock had a 
limit ; and the minister’s mother knew it 
was necessary not to yield too completely to 
all the demands that her son’s people might 
make upon her. Was this even one of her 
son’s people ? Such persons were unusual 
in the connection. Mrs. Vincent, all fa- 
tigued, excited, and anxious as she was, felt 
at her wits’ end. 

“Yes, your son would know if he were 
here ; he has taken my parole and trusted 
me,” said the strange W'oraan ; but a woman’s 
parole should not be taken. I try to keep 

it ; but unless they come or I have news 

Who am I ? I am a woman that was once 
young and had friends. They married me 
to a man, who was not a man, but a flne 
organization capable of pleasures and cruel- 
ties. Don’t speak. You are very good ; 
you are a minister’s wife. You don’t know 
what it is, when one is young and happy, to 
find out all at once that life means only so 
much torture and misery, and so many lies, 
either done by you or borne by you — what 
does it matter which ? My baby came into 
the world with a haze on her sweet soul 
because of that discovery. If it had been 
but her body ! ” said Mrs Vincent’s strange 
companion, with bitterness. “ A dwarfed 
creature or deformed, or— But she was 
beautiful — she ia beautiful, as pretty as 
Alice ; and if she lives she will be rich. 
Hush, Hush ! you don’t know what my fears 
were,” continued Mrs. Hilyard, with a 
strange humility, once more putting her 
hand on the widow’s arm. “ If he could have 
got possession of her, how could I tell what 
he might have done P — killed her— but that 
would have been dangerous ; poisoned what 
little mind she had left — made her like her 
mother. I stole her away. Long ago, when 
I thought she might have been safe with 
you, I meant to have told you. I stole 
her out of his power. For a little while 


she was with me, and he traced us — then 
I sent the child away. I have not seen her 
but in glimpses, lest he should find her. It 
has cost me all I had, and I have lived and 
worked with my hands,” said the needle- 
woman of Back Grove Street, lifting her thin 
fingers to the light and looking at them, 
pathetic vouchers to the truth of her story. 
“ When he drove me desperate,” she went 
on, labouring in vain to conceal the panting, 
long-drawn breath which impeded her utter- 
ance, “ you know ? I don’t talk of that. The 
child put her arms round that old woman 
after her mother had saved her. She had 
not a word, not a word for me, who had 

done But it was all for her sake. This 

is what I have had to suffer. She looked in 
my face and waved me away from her and 
said ‘ Susan, Susan ! ’ Susan meant your 
daughter— a new friend, a creature whom 
she had not seen a week before — and no 
word, no look, no recognition for me. 

“ Oh, I am very sorry, very sorry ! ” said 
Mrs. Vincent, in her turn taking the poor 
thin hand with an instinct of consolation. 
Susan’s name thus introduced, went to the 
mother’s heart. She could have wept over 
the other mother thus complaining, moaning 
out her troubles in her compassionate ear. 

“ I left them in a safe place. I came 
home to fall into your son’s hands. He 
might have been sure, had it come to that, 
that no one should have suffered for me,” 
said Mrs. Hilyard, with again a tone of bit- 
terness. “ What was my life worth, could 
any man suppose ? And since then I have 
not heard a word — not a word — whether the 
child is still where I left her, or whether some 
of Ms people have found her — or whether she 
is ill— or whether — I know nothing, noth- 
ing ! Have a little pity upon me, you in- 
nocent woman ! I never asked pity, never 
sought sympathy before ; but a woman can 
never tell what she may be brought to. I 
am brought down to the lowest depths. I 
cannot stand upright any longer,” she cried, 
with a wailing sigh. I want somebody — 
somebody at least to give me a little com- 
fort. Comfort ! I remember,” she said, 
with one of those sudden changes of tone 
which bewildered Mrs. Vincent, “your son 
once spoke to me of getting comfort from 
those innocent young sermons of his. He 
knows a little better now ; he does not sail 
over the surface now as he used to do in 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 277 


triumph. Life has gone hard with him, as 
"with me and all of us. Tell him, if I get no 
news I will break my parole. I cannot help 
myself — a woman’s honor is not her word. 

I told him so. Say to your son ” 

“ My son ? what have you to do with my 
son ? ” said Mrs. Vincent, with a sudden 
pang. The poor mother was but a woman 
too. . She did not understand what this con- 
nection was. A worn creature not much 
younger than herself, what possible tie could 
bind her to Arthur ? The widow, like other 
women, could believe in any “ infatuation ” 
of men ; but could not understand any other 
bond subsisting between these two. The 
thought w^ent to her heart. Young men had 
been known before now to be mysteriously 
attracted by women old; unbeautiful, unlike 
themselves. Could this be Arthur’s fate ? 
Perhaps it was a danger more dismal than 
that which he had just escaped in Salem. 
Mrs. Vincent grew sick at heart. She re- 
peated, with an asperity of which her soft 
voice might have been thought incapable, 
“ What have you to do with my son ? ” 
Mrs. Hilyard made no answer — perhaps 
she did not hear the question. Her eyes, 
always restlessly turning from one object to 
another, had found out, in the lighted street 
to which they had now come, a belated post- 
man delivering his last letters. She fol- 
lowed him with devouring looks ; he went to 
Vincent’s door as they approached, delivered 
something, and passed on into the darkness 
with a careless whistle. While Mrs. Vincent 
watched her companion with doubtful and 
suspicious looks through the veil which, 
once more among the lights of Grange 
Street, the minister’s mother had drawn 
over her face, the unconscious object of her 
suspicion grasped her arm, and turned to her 
with beseeching eyes. “ It may be news 
of my child ? ” she said, with a supplication 
beyond* words. She drew the widow on 
with the desperation of her anxiety. The 
little maid had still the letter in her hand 
when she opened the door. It was not 
even for Mr. Vincent. It was for the mis- 
tress of the house, who had not yet returned 
from the meeting at Salem. Mrs. Vincent 
paused upon the threshold,, compassionate 
but determined. She looked at the unhappy 
woman who stood upon the steps in the light 
of the lamp, gazing eagerly in at the door, 
and resolved that she should penetrate no 


farther ; but even in the height of her deter- 
mination the widow’s heart smote her when 
she looked at that face, so haggard and worn 
with passion and anxiety, with its furtive 
gleaming eyes, and all the dark lines of en- 
durance which were so apparent how, when 
the tide of emotion had grown too strong to 
be concealed. “ Have you — no — friends in 
Carlingford ? ” said the widow with hesita- 
tion and involuntary pity. She could not 
ask her to enter where, perhaps, her presence 
might be baleful to Arthur; but the little 
woman’s tender heart ached, even in the 
midst of her severity, for the suffering in 
that face. 

“ Nowhere ! ” said Mrs. Hilyard ; then 
with a gleam out of her eyes which took the 
place of a smile, “ Do not be sorry for me ; 
I want no friends — nobody could share my 
burden with me, I am going back — home — 
to Alice. Tell Mr. Vincent ; I think some- 
thing must happen to-night,” she added with 
a slight shiver ; “ it grows intolerable, be- 
yond bearing. Perhaps by the telegraph 

— or perhaps And Miss Smith has this 

address. I told you my story,” she went on, 
drawing closer, and taking the widow’s 
hand, “ that you might have pi^ on me, 
and understand — no, not understand; how 
could she ? — but if you were like me, do 
you think you could sit still in one place, 
with so much upon your heart? You never 
could be like me — but if you had lost your 
child ” 

“ I did,” said Mrs. Vincent, drawing a 
painful breath at the recollection, and drawn 
unwittingly by the sight of the terrible anx- 
iety before her into a reciprocation of confi- 
dence, “ my child who had been in my arms 
all her life — God gave her back again ; and 
now, while I am speaking, he may be taking 
her away,” said the mother, with a sudden 
return of all her anxiety. “ I cannot do you 
any good, and Susan may want me : good- 
night— good-night.” 

“ It was not God who gave her back to 
you,” said Mrs. Hilyard, grasping the wid- 
ow’s hand closer, “it was I— remember it 
was I. When you think hardly of me, rec- 
ollect — I did it. She might have been— but 
I freed her — remember ; and if you hear any- 
thing, if it W'ere but a whisper, of my child, 
think of it and have pity on me. You will ? 
— you understand what I say ? ” 

The widow drew away her hand with a 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


278 

pang of fear. She retreated hurriedly, yet 
•with what dignity she could, calling the lit- 
tle maid to shut the door. AVhen that strange 
fac<", all gleaming, haggard, and anxious, 
was shut out into the night, Mrs. Vincent 
went up-stairs very hastily, scarcely able to 
give her alarmed withdrawal the aspect of an 
orderly retreat. Was this woman mad to 
whom she had been speaking so calmly ? In 
her agitation she forgot all the precautions 
with which she had intended to soften to her 
son the fact of her attendance at that meet- 
ing of which he had not even informed her. 
Pursued by the recollection of that face, she 
hastened to, Arthur, still in her bonnet and 
veil. He was seated at the table writing as 
when she left him; but all the minister’s 
self-control could not conceal a certain ex- 
pectancy and excitement in the eyes which he 
raised with a flash of eager curiosity to see 
who it was that thus invaded his solitude. 

Mother ! where have you been ? ” he asked, 
with irritation, when he perceived her. His 
impatience and anxiety, and the great effort he 
had made to subdue both, betrayed him into a 
momentary outburst of annoyance and vex- 
ation. “ Where have you been ? ” he re- 
peated, throwing down his pen. “ Surely not 
to this meeting, to compromise me, as if I had 
not trouble enough already ! ” This rude 
accost put her immediate subject out of Mrs. 
Vincent’s mind : she went up to her son with 
deprecating looks, and put her hand fondly 
on his head. The tears came into her eyes, 
not because his words offended or grieved 
her, but for joy of the good news she had to 
tell ; for the minister’s mother was experi- 
enced in the ways of man, and knew how 
many things a woman does for love which 
she gets no thanks for doing. Her boy’s 
anger did not make her angry, but it drove 
other matters, less important, out of her 
head. 

“ O Arthur, no one saw me,” she said : 
“ I had my veil down all the time. How 
could I help going when I knew of it ? I did 
not tell you — I did not mean you to know ; 
but it was impossible to stay aw^ay,” cried 
the widow, perceiving her son’s impatience 
while she explained herself, and growing 
confused in consequence, “ when I heard 
W'hat was going on. O Arthur, dear, don’t 
look so disturbed ; they know better than 
you imagine — they appreciate you, though 
they have not the way of showing it. I have 


seen things happen so differently, that I know 
the value of such friends as you have in the 
flock. O my dear boy, don’t look so 
strange ! It has been a great triumph, Ar- 
thur. There is a deputation coming to offer 
you their support and sympathy. All this 
dreadful business has not harmed you. 
Thank God for that ! I think I shall be able 
to bear anything now’.” 

The minister got up hastily from his chair, 
and took refuge on the hearth-rug. He 
changed color ; grew’ red and grew pale ; 
and by way of escaping from the complica- 
tion of feelings that moved him, once more 
broke out into impatient exclamations. 
“ Why did you go ? Why did not you tell 
me you were going ? ” he said. “ Why did 
you leave Susan, who wanted you ? Mother, 
you will never understand that a man’s af- 
fairs must not be meddled with ! ” cried the 
Nonconformist, with an instinctive effort to 
conceal the agitation into which this unex- 
pected news threw him. Then he began to 
pace about the room, exclaiming against the 
impatience of w’omen, W’ho can never wait 
for a result. The young man w^as too proud 
to acknow’ledge the state of feverish suspense 
in which he had been, or the wonderful tu- 
mult suddenly produced in his mind. He 
seized upon this ready safety-valve of irrita- 
tion, which was half real and half fictitious. 
It gave him time to collect his troubled 
thoughts. 

“ Arthur, dear, hush ! no one saw me at 
the meeting. I had my veil down, and spoke 
to nobody,” said the widow ; “ and oh ! don’t 
you think it was only natural that your mother 
should be there ? No one in the w'orld is so 
much interested in what concerns you. I 
spoke to no one— except,” said Mrs. Vin- 
cent, with a little effort, “ that strange wo- 
man, Arthur, whom you have had so much 
to do with. Who is she ? O my dear boy, 

I hope you have not formed any connections 
that you will repent ? She said something 
about a promise, and having given her word. 

I don’t know why you should have her word, 
or what she has to do with you. She came 
here to the door with me to-night.” 

“ Mrs. Hilyard ! ” cried the minister, sud- 
denly roused. “ Mrs. no matter what 

her name is. Where is she ? Do you mean 
that she came here ? They keep no watch 
over her. To-night of all nights in the 
world ! If you had but stayed at home, I 




CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 279 


should not have known of her wanderings at 
least,” he said, with vexation. “ Now I 
shall have to go and look after her — she 
must be sent back again — she must not be 
allowed to escape.” 

“ Is she mad ? ” said Mrs. Vincent, alarmed, 
yet relieved. “ Don’t go away, Arthur ; she 
is not here. She said I was to tell you that 
she had gone back — to Alice. Who is Al- 
ice ? — who is this woman ? What have you 
to do w’ith her ? O my dear boy, you are 
a minister, and the world is so ready to make 
remarks. She said you had her w’ord. O 
Arthur, I hope it does not mean anything 
you will live to repent ? ” cried the anxious 
mother, fixing her jealous eyes on her son’s 
face. “ She is not like you. I cannot tell 
what you can have to do with such a woman 

— you who might ” Mrs. Vincent’s fright 

and anxiety exhausted both her language 
and her breath. 

“ It does not matter much after all,” said 
the Nonconformist, who had been busy with 
his own thoughts, and had only half heard 
his mother’s adjurations. “ Like me ? — 
what has that to do with the matter ? But 
I dare say she will go back, as she said ; and 
now that he is out of danger, and has not 
accused her, things must take their chance. 
Mad ? It would not be wonderful if she 
were mad. I can sympathize with people 
w'hen they are driven out of their wits. Who 
is this next ? Another messenger from the 
meeting, or perhaps your deputation ? I 
think I shall go mad after awhile if I get no 
rest.” 

But as the minister stood in ill-concealed 
excitement by the fire, not without expecta- 
tion that it might be somebody with an offi- 
cial report from Salem, Mr. Vincent’s land- 
lady, still in her bonnet and shawl, just re- 
turned from the meeting, came in to tell the 
widow of the approach of the doctor. “ He’s 
a-coming directly, ma’am : he’s gone in for 
a minute to Smith’s, next door, where they’ve 
got the hooping-cough. And O Mr. Vin- 
cent,” cried the woman, who had made this 
a pretence to express her sentiments on the 
more important subject, “ if there hasn’t 
a-been a sweet meeting ! I’d have giv’ a 
half-year’s rent, ma’am, the pastor had been 
there. All as unanimous and as friendly ! — 
all but them Pigeons, as are the poison of 
the place ; and sweet Miss Phoebe Tozer 
a-crying of her pretty eyes out j but there 


aint no occasion for crying now,” said the 
triumphant landlady, who had a real stake 
in the matter. At this touch the minister 
regained his composure. He went back to 
his seat at the table, and took up the pen he 
had thrown down. A bishop could not have 
looked more grandly indifierent than did the 
Nonconformist as he turned his back upon 
his anxious partisan. “ Tell the doctor to 
let me know how Susan is, mother, for I am 
busy to-night,” said the young man. “I 
cannot leave my work just now even for Dr. 
Rider.” He began again to write in the ex- 
citement of his mind, and produced a sen- 
tence which was not one of the least success- 
ful of his sentences, while the two women 
with a certain awe stood silent behind his 
chair. 

“ I will not disturb you any longer, my 
dear boy. Good-night,” said Mrs. Vincent. 
She went away, followed by the discomfited 
landlady, who was overwhelmed, and did not 
know what to make of it. The widow could 
not but improve such an opportunity. “ The 
minister must not be disturbed in his stud- 
ies,” she said, with importance, and in a whis- 
per as she closed the door. “ When he is 
engaged with a subject, it does not answer 
to go in upon him and disturb his attention. 
Neither meetings nor anything else, however 
important, should interrupt a pastor when 
he is engaged in composition,” said the lit- 
tle woman, grandly. But while the mistress 
of the house departed to her own quarter 
much overawed, the minister’s mother went 
to the sick-room with no such composure as 
she assumed. Something she did not un- 
derstand w’as in Arthur’s mind. The Salem 
meeting did not appear to her so conclusive 
as it had done an hour ago. He was young 
and high-spirited and proud, and had not 
that dutiful subjection to the opinions of the 
flock which became a minister of Salem. 
What if that visionary horror with which 
she had frightened Tozer might turn out a 
real danger ? Though she had made suph 
skilful use of it, the possibility she had her- 
self invented had not really alarmed her; 
but the thought thrilled through her now 
with a fear w'hich had some remorse in it. , 
She had invoked the ghost, not much believ- ' 
ing in any such supernatural climax ; but if 
the apparition really made itself visible, the 
widow recognized at once her entire want 
of any po'wer to lay it. She took off her 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


280 

shawl and bonnet with little comfort in her 
mind on that subject to support her under 
the returning pangs of anxiety about Susan, 
which overwhelmed her again as she opened 
the door of the sick-room. The two troubles 
united in her heart and aggravated each 
other, as with a sick throb of expectation 
she went in to Susan’s bedside. Perhaps 
there might be “ a change ” — for better or 
for worse, something might have happened. 
The doctor might find something more con- 
clusive to-night in that languid, pallid face. 
The noiseless room struck her with a chill 
of misery as she went to her usual place, 
carrying the active life of pain and a troubled 
heart into that melancholy atmosphere from 
which life seemed to have fled. With a fal- 
tering voice she spoke to Susan, who showed 
no signs of hearing her except by a feeble, 
half-lifting of her heavy eyelids and restless 
motion of her frame. No change ! Never 
any change ! or at least, as the nurse imag- 
ined, until The widow’s heart heaved 

with a silent sob of anguish — anguish sharp 
and acute as it is when our misery breaks sud- 
denly upon us out of a veil of other thoughts, 
and we feel it intolerable. This sudden 
pang convulsed Mrs. Vincent’s much-tried 
heart as she wiped the bitter tears out of her 
eyes and looked at her child, thus gliding, in 
a hopeless apathy and unconsciousness, out 
of the arms that strained themselves in vain 
to hold her. After so much as she had borne 
in her troubled life, God knows, it was hard. 
She did not rebel, but her heart lifted up a 
bitter cry to the Father in heaven. 

It Avas just then, while her anxious ear 
caught the step of the doctor on the stair, 
that Mrs. Vincent was aware also of a car- 
riage driving rapidly up to the door. Pre- 
occupied as she was, the sound startled her. 
A passing wonder who it could be, and the 
vague expectation which influences the mind 
at the great crises of life, when one feels that 
anything may happen, moved her dimly as 
she rose to receive the doctor. Dr. Rider 
came in with his noiseless step and anxious 
face ; they shook hands with each other me- 
chanically, she gazing at him to see what his 
opinion was before it could be formed — he 
looking with solicitous serious eyes on the 
sick-bed. The light was dim, and Dr, Rider 
held it up to see his patient. There she lay, 
moving now and then with the restlessness 
of weakness, the pale large eyelids half closed. 


the pale lips dropping apart, — a solemn, 
speechless creature, abstracted already out 
of this world and all its influences. The 
light that streamed over her for the moment 
made no difference to Susan. There w’as 
nothing here powerful enough to rouse the 
soul which horror and passion had driven 
into one terrible comer of memory, obliter- 
ating all the rest of her life. Dr. Rider 
looked at her with eyes in which the impa- 
tience of powerless strength overcame even 
his professional reserve. He wrung the wid- 
ow’s hand, which she laid on his arm in a 
trembling appeal to him to tell her the worst. 
“ The worst is that she is dying before our 
eyes, and that she might be saved,” he said, 
leading the poor mother to the other end of 
the room. “ All her heart and soul are con- 
centrated upon that time when she was away 
from you : unless we can rouse her by some- 
thing that will recall that time, she will never 
know you more. Think ! is there, nothing 
that would wake her up even to remember 
the misery she endured ? Where is your 
servant who was with her ?— but she has seen 
her lately, and nothing has come of that. 
If you have the courage and strength,” said 
the doctor, once more grasping Mrs. Vin- 
cent’s hand tight, “ to talk of that man un- 
der the name she knew him by — to talk of 
him so as perhaps she might hear ; to dis- 
cuss the matter; anything that will recall 
her mind. Hush ! what is that noise down- 
stairs ? ” 


Even while listening to the doctor’s dread- 
ful suggestion, Mrs. Vincent had been aw’are 
of the opening of the door down-stairs, and 
of a sound of voices. She w'as trembling so 
that she could scarcely stand, principally, no 
doubt, on account of this strange demand' 
which he made upon her strength, but with 
a nervous expectation besides which she 
could not explain even to herself. But 
when, out of that confused commotion be- 
low, there rose faint but audible the sound 
of a voice calling “ Susan ! Susan ! ” the 
two anxious people started apart, and turned 
a -wondering momentary gaze upon -each 
other, involuntarily asking what was that ? 
what did it mean ? Then the doctor rushed 
to the door, where the widow followed him 
as well as her trembling limbs would per- 
mit. She saw him dash down-stairs, and 
herself stood grasping the railing, waiting 
for what was about to happen, with her 


II 

l! 

r- 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


heart so beating and fluttering in her breast 
that she could scarcely breathe for it. She 
; could make nothing of the rapid interroga- 
tion that went on down-stairs. She heard 
the voice of the doctor in hasty questions, 
and the slow, agitated, somewhat confused 
utterance of a strange voice, which appeared 
to answ'er him ; and once or twice through 
these sounds, came the strange cry, “ Susan ! 
Susan ! ” which went to the widow’s heart. 
Who could this be that called upon Susan 
with so pathetic a repetition ? It seemed a 
very long interval to Mrs. Vincent before 
the doctor re-appeared, and yet so .short 
was the time, that the door by which the 
new-comers, whoever they were, had en- 
tered, was still open, admitting some strange 
familiar sounds from the street into the be- 
wildering maze of wonder and expectation. 
Mrs. Vincent held fast by the rails to sup- 
port herself, when she saw the doctor re- 
turning up the stair, leading by the hand a 
girl whom he grasped fast, and carried along 
with him by a kind of gentle but strong 
compulsion. It was she who was calling 
Susan, gazing round her with large dilated 
blue eyes, looking everywhere for something 
she had not yet found. A beautiful girl, 
more beautiful than anything mortal to the 
widow’s surprised and wondering eyes. AVho 
was she ? The face w’as very young, sadly 
! simple, framed by long curling locks of fair 
! hair, and the broad circle of a large flapping 
Leghorn hat and blue veil.' A bewildered 
half-recognition came to Mrs. Vincent’s 
mind as this blue veil waved in her face in 
the wind from the open door; but excite- 
ment and anxiety had deprived her of 
speech: she could ask no questions. “Here 
is the physician,” said Dr. Rider, with a 
kindred excitement in his voice. He went 
into the room before her, leading the girl, 
behind whom there followed slowly a con- 
fused and disturbed woman, whose face 
! Mrs. Vincent felt she had seen before. The 
i mother, half jealous in her wonder, pressed 
4 in after the doctor to guard her Susan even 
from experiments of healing. “ Doctor, doc- 
tor, who. is it ? ” she said. But Dr. Rider 
held up his hand imperatively to silence her. 
The room was imperfectly lighted with can- 
dles burning dimly, and a faint glow of fire- 
light. “ Susan ! ” cried the eager child’s 
voice, with a weary echo of longing and 
I disappointment. “ Susan ! — take me to Su- 


281 

san ; she is not here.” Then Dr. Rider led 
her round to the bedside, closely followed by 
the widow, and, lifting a candle, threw its 
light fully upon the stranger. “Is it Su- 
san ? ” said the girl. “ Will she not speak 
to me ? — is she dead ? Susan, O Susan, 
Susan ! ” It was an outcry of childish im- 
patience and despair, rising louder than any 
voice had risen in that room for many a day. 
Then she burst forth into tears and sobs. 
“ Susan ! — she will not speak to me, she will 
not look at me ! ” cried the stranger, draw- 
ing her arm out of the doctor’s hold, and 
clasping her hands together. There was a 
slight movement in the bed : not the restless 
tossing with which her nurse was familiar, 
but a trembling shiver came over that dying 
frame. The sound had reached to the dull 
ears of the patient. She lifted her heavy- 
eyelids, and looked round with half-awak- 
ened eyes. “ Call her again, again ! ” said 
the doctor, in an intense whisper, which 
seemed to thrill through the room. The 
girl, who was engaged with a much more 
engrossing interest of her own, took no no- 
tice of the doctor. She knew nothing about 
Susan’s danger — she was bent on gaining 
succoy for herself. “ Susan ! — tell her to 
look at me — at me ! Susan! I care for no- 
body but you ! ” said the lovely, helpless 
creature, with strange, half-articulate cries, 
pressing closer to the bed. “ You are to 
take care of me.” Mrs. Vincent pressed 
forward with pangs of anxiety, of terror, 
of hope, and of a mother’s tender jealousy, 
through all, as these strange entreaties filled 
the room. She, too, cried aloud, as she 
perceived the awakening in that pallid face, 
the faint movement as if to raise herself up, 
which indicated a conscious efibrt on the 
part of Susan. The clouds were breaking 
on that obscured and hopeless firmament. 
The light which trembled in the doctor’s 
hand, caught a gleam of understanding and 
life in Susan’s eyes, as her mother flew to' 
raise her up, obeying the suggestion of that 
unhoped-for movement. “ Susan ! you said 
you would take care of me ! ” cried the young 
stranger, throwing herself upon the bedside 
and grasping at the weak arm which once 
had protected her. The touch of her hands 
awoke the slumbering soul. Slowly the 
light grew in Susan’s eyes. She who had 
not moved for days except in the restless 
tossings of languor, lifted those white feeble 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


t 


282 

arms to put them round the appealing child. 
Then Susan struggled up, faint, yet inspired, 
unconscious of her mother’s help that ena- 
bled her to do so, and confronted the strange 
people in her room, whom she had seen for 
weeks past, but did not know with living 
eyes. “Nobody shall touch her — we will 
‘protect each other,” said the voice that had 
grown strange even to her mother’s ears. 
Mrs. Vincent could hardly be restrained 
from breaking in wdth a thousand caresses 
and outcries of joy and thankfulness. But 
Dr. Rider quieted the poor mother with a 
touch of his hand. “ Let them alone,” he 
said, with that authority which no one in a 
sick-room can resist. Mrs. Vincent kept 
back with unspeakable pangs in her heart, 
and watched the waking up of that para- 
lyzed life which, alike in its loss and its re- 
covery, had been swept apart from her into 
another world. Without any help from her 
mother, without even recognizing her mother 
or distinguishing her from the strangers 
round, Susan’s soul awoke. She raised her- 
self more and more among those pillows 
where a little while ago she lay so passively 
— she opened her eyes fully and looked 
round upon the man by her bedside,, and 
the other indistinct figures in the room, with 
a look of resistance and conscious strength. 
“ We will protect each other,” said Susan, 
slowly : “ nobody shall harm her — we will 
keep each other safe.” Then, after another 
interval, other instincts awoke in the reviv- 
ing soul. She cast a wistful look from one 
to another, always drawing her faint white 
arm round the girl who clung to her, and 
found security ifi her clasp. “ Hush, hush ! 
there are women here,” she said in a whis- 
per, and with a tone of strange confusion, 
light breaking through the darkness. Then 
there followed a long pause. Dr. Rider 
stood by the bedside holding up his candle, 
attracting the wandering, wistful glances of 
his patient, who ceased to look at him with 
defiance as her eyes again and again re- 
turned to the face, of which, often as it 
had bent over her, she had no knowledge. 
All over the unknown room wandered those 
strange looks, interrogating everything with 
a wistfulness beyond words. What was this 
strange, unfamiliar world into which, after 
her trance of suffering, Susan had awak- 
ened? She did not know where she w'as, 
nor who the people were who surrounded 


her. But the recollection of deadly peril 
was not more distinct upon her confused 
mind than was the sentiment of safety, of 
love, and watchfulness which somehow abode 
in this strange, dim room, in the little un- 
decipherable circle of faces which surrounded 
her bed. “ Hush ! ” said Susan again, hold- 
ing the stranger close. “ Here are women 
— women ! nobody will harm us ; ” then, 
with a sudden flush over all her face, and 
cry of joy as tjie doctor suddenly threw the 
light full upon Mrs. Vincent, who was bend- 
ing over her, her mind struggled into pos- 
session of itself, “ Here is my mother ! she 
has come to take us home ! ” 

Mrs. Vincent remembered nothing more ; 
she did not faint, for her child wanted her — 
she sat all the night through on the bed, 
with Susan leaning against her shoulder, 
clinging to her, holding her fast — starting 
again and again to make sure that all was 
safe, and that it was indeed her mother’s 
arms that held her. Her soul w'as recalled 
out of that trance of death. They laid the 
beautiful child upon the sofa in her young 
guardian’s sight, to keep up that happy in- 
fluence ; and when the night w^as about half 
spent, the w'idow, throbbing all over her 
wearied frame with exhaustion, pain, and 
joy, perceived that her Susan had fallen deep 
and sweet asleep, clasping close, as if never 
again to lose hold of them, her mother’s 
tender hands. 

CaAPTER XXXVIII. 

The after-events of the evening naturally 
lessened, in the minister’s family at least, the 
all-absorbing interest of the meeting at Sa- 
lem. Even Mr. Vincent’s landlady, in her 
wondering narrative of the scene in the sick- 
room — which, all Mrs. Vincent’s usual deco- 
rums being thrust aside by that unexpected 
occurrence, she had witnessed: — forgot the 
other public event which was of equally great 
importance. The house was in a state of 
agitation as great as on Susan’s return ; and 
wdien the exulting doctor, whose experiment 
had been so rarely successful, turned all su- 
pernumerary persons out of the sick-room, 
it fell to Vincent’s part to take charge of the 
perplexed governess. Miss Smith, who stood 
outside, anxious to offer explanations, a fa- 
tigued and harassed, but peifectly virtuous 
and exemplary woman. Vincent, who had 
not realized his sister’s extreme peril, and 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 283 


1; who was rather disconcerted by this fresh 
U invasion of his house, opened the door of his 
sitting-room for her with more annoyance 
than hospitality. His own affairs were ur- 
gent in his mind. He could not keep his 
' thoughts from dwelling upon Salem and what 
had occurred there, though no one else 
( thought of it. Had he known the danger 
f in which his sister lay, his heart might have 
rejected every secondary matter. But the 
!' minister did not know that Susan had been 
■ sinking into the last apathy when this sud- 
i den arrival saved her. He gave Miss Smith 
: the easy-chair b]' the fire, and listened with 
an appearance of attention, but with little 
real understanding, to her lengthy and per- 
i plexed story. She was all in a flutter, the 
good governess said : everything was so 
mysterious and out of the way, she did not 
know what to think. Little Alice’s mamma. 
Miss Hussell that was, Mrs. Mildmay she 
meant, had brought the child back to her 
after that dreadful business at Dover. What 
was the rights of that business, could Mr. 
Vincent tell her? Colonel Mildmay was 
getting better, she knew, and it was not a 
murder ; and she was heart-broken when she 
: heard the trouble poor dear Miss Vincent 
had got into about it. Well, Alice’s mamma 
brought back the child, and they started with 
her at once to France. They went up be- 
yond Lyons to the hills, an out-of-the-way 
(■ little place, but Mrs. Mildmay was always 
so nervous. “And then she left us, Mr. 
Vincent,” said the afflicted governess, as the 
minister, in grievous impatience, kept pacing 
up and down the room thus occupied and 
taken possession of — “ left us without a soul 
to speak to or a church within reach ; and 
if there is one thing I have more horror of 
than another for its effect upon the youthful 
. mind, it is Popery, which is so seductive to 
' the imagination. Alice did not take to 
i her mamma, Mr. Vincent. It was natural 
: enough, but it was hard upon Mrs. Mild- 
^ may : she never had a good way with chil- 
i dren ; and from the moment we started till 
^ now, it has been impossible to get your sis- 
3 ter out of the child’s mind. She took a 
‘ fancy to her the moment she saw her. Girls 
! of that age, if you will not think it strange 
I of me to say so, very often fall in love with 
I a girl older than themselves — quite fall in 
: love, though it is a strange thing to say. 
Alice would not rest— she gave me no peace. 


I wrote to say so, but I think Mrs. Mildmay 
could not have got my letter. The child 
would have run away by herself if I had. not 
brought her. Besides,” said Miss Smith, 
apologetically, “ the doctors have assured 
me that, if she ever became much interested 
in any one, or attached to anybody in par- 
ticular, she was not to be crossed. It was 
the best chance for her mind, the doctors 
said. What could I do? What do you 
think I could do, Mr. Vincent ? I brought 
her home, for I could not help myself — oth- 
erwise she would have run away. She has 
a very strong will, though she looks so gen- 
tle. I hope you will help me to explain the 
circumstances to Mrs. Mildmay, and how it 
was I came back without her authority. 
Don’t you think they ought to call in the 
friends on both sides and come to some ar- 
rangement, Mr. Vincent ? ” said the excel- 
lent woman, anxiously. “ I know she trusts 
you very much, and it was she herself who 
gave me your address.” 

To this speech Vincent listened with an 
impatience and restlessness which he found 
it impossible to conceal. He paced about 
the darker end of his room, on the other 
side of that table, where the lamp shone 
vacantly upon his open desk and scattered 
papers, answering now and then with a mon- 
osyllable of reluctant courtesy, irritated and 
disturbed beyond expression by the perfectly 
serious and proper figure seated by the fire. 
Somebody might come from that assembly 
which had met to discuss him, and he could 
not be alone to receive them. In the annoy- 
ance of the moment the minister almost 
chafed at his sister and her concerns. His 
life was invaded by thesb women, with their 
mysteries and agonies. He listened to the 
steps outside, thinking every moment to hear 
the steady tramp of the deputation from Sa- 
lem, or at least Tozer, whom it would have 
been balm to his mind, in the height of the 
good man’s triumph, to cut short and anni- 
hilate. But how do that, or anything else, 
with this woman seated by his fire explain- 
ing her unintelligible affairs ? Such was 
Vincent’s state of mind while his mother, in 
an agony of joy, was hearing from Susan’s 
lips, for the first time, broken explanations 
of those few days of her life which outbal- 
anced in terrible importance all its preceding 
years. The minister did not know that his 
sister’s very existence, as well as her reason, 


284 SALEM CHAPEL. 


hung upon that unhoped-for opening of her 
mouth and heart. 

Matters were not much mended when Dr. 
Rider came in, beaming and radiant, full of 
congratulations. Susan was saved. It was 
the .most curious psychological puzzle, the 
doctor said; all her life had got concen- 
trated into the few days between her depart- 
ure from Lonsdale and her arrival at Car- 
lingford. Neither her old existence, nor the 
objects that surrounded her at the moment, 
had any significance for Susan ; only some- 
thing that belonged to that wonderful inter- 
val in which she had been driven desperate, 
could win back consciousness to her mind. 
It was the most siifgular case he had ever 
met with ; but he knew this was the only 
way of treating it, and so it had proved. 
He recognized the girl with the blue veil the 
moment he saw her — he knew it could be no 
other. Who was she ? Where had she 
sprung from at that critical moment ? where 
had she been ? what was to be done with 
her ? Dr. Rider poured forth his questions 
like a stream. He was full of professional 
triumph, not to say natural satisfaction. He 
could not understand how his patient’s 
brother, at that wonderful crisis, could have 
a mind pre- occupied or engaged with other 
things. The doctor turned with lively sym- 
pathy and curiosity from the anxious Non- 
conformist to Miss Smith, who was but too 
willing to begin all her explanations over 
again. Dr. Rider, accustomed to hear many 
personal narratives, collected this story a 
great deal more clearly than Vincent, who 
was so much more interested in it, had, with 
all his opportunities, been able to do. How 
long the poor minister might have sufiered 
under this conversation, it is impossible to 
tell. But Mrs. Vincent, in all the agitation 
of her daughter’s deliverance, could not for- 
get the griefs of others. She sent a little 
message to her son, begging that he would 
send word of this arrival to “ the poor lady.” 
“ To let her know — but she must not come 
. here to-night,” was the widow’s message, 
who was just then having the room dark- 
ened, and everything arranged for the night, 
if perhaps her child might sleep. This mes- 
sage delivered the minister ; it recalled Miss 
Smith to her duty. She it was who must 
go and explain everything to her patroness. 
Dr. Rider, whose much-excited wonder was 
still further stimulated by hearing that the 


child’s mother w’as at Lady Western’s, that 
she was Mrs. Mildmay, and that the Non- 
conformist was in her confidence, cheerfully 
undertook to carry the governess in his drag 
to Grange Lane, not without hopes of fur- 
ther information ; and it was now getting 
late. Miss Smith made Vincent a tremulous 
courtesy, and held out her hand to him to 
say good-night. “ The doctor will perhaps 
explain to Mrs. Mildmay why I have left 
little Alice,” said the troubled woman. “ I 
have never left her before since she was in- 
trusted to me — never but when her papa 
stole her away ; and you are a minister, Mr. 
Vincent — and oh, I hope I am doing quite 
right, and as Alice’s mamma will approve ! 
But if she disapproves I must come back 
and ” 

“ They must not be disturbed to-night,” 
said Dr. Rider, promptly; “I will see Mrs. 
Mildmay.” He was not reluctant to see 
Mrs. Mildmay. The doctor, though he was 
not a. gossip, was not inaccessible to the 
pleasure of knowing more than anybody else 
of the complications of this strange business, 
which still afibrded matter of talk to Car- 
lingford. He hurried her aw^ay while still 
the good governess was all in a flutter, and 
for the first time the minister was left alone. 
It was with a troubled mind that the young 
man resumed his seat at his desk. He be- 
gan to get utterly ^yeary of this business, 
and all about it. If he could only have swept 
away in a whirlwind, with his mother and 
sister, where the name of Mildmay had never 
been heard of, and where he could forever 
get rid of that haunting woman w'ith her 
gleaming eyes, who had pursued even his 
gentle mother to the door ! but this new 
complication seemed to involve him deeper 
than ever in those strange bonds. It was 
with a certain disgust that the minister 
thought it all over as he sat leaning his head 
on his hands. His way was dark before 
him, yet it must speedily be decided. Every- 
thing was at a crisis in his excited mind 
and troubled life — even that strange, lovely 
child’s face, which had roused Susan from 
her apathy, had its share in the excitement 
of her brother’s thoughts ; for it W'as but 
another version, with difi'erences, of the face 
of that other Alice, who all unv/ittingly had 
procured for Vincent the sweetest and the 
hardest hours he had spent in Carlingford. 
Were they all to pass like a dream — ^her 


I smiles, her sweet looks, her kind words, even 

that magical touch upon his arm, which had 
once charmed him out of all his troubles ? 
A groan came out of the young man’s heart, 

' not loud, but deep, as that thought moved 
him. The very despair of this love-dream 
had been more exquisite than any pleasure 
of his life. Was it all to pass away and be 
1 no longer ? Life and thought, the actual 
i and the visionary, had both come to a cli- 
1 max, and seemed to stand still, waiting the 
I decision which must be come to that night. 

From these musings the entrance of Tozer 
/ roused the minister. The excellent butter- 
t man came in all flushed and glowing from 
i his success. To him, the meeting, which 
. already the Nonconformist had half lost sight 
‘ of under the superstructure of subsequent 
events, had newly concluded, and was the 
one occurrence of the time. The cheers 
1 which had hailed him master of the fleld 
r were still ringing in Tozer’s ears. “ I don’t 
deny as I am intoxicated-like,” said the ex- 
cellent deacon ; “ them cheers was enough 
to carry any man off his legs, sir, if you’ll 
: believe me. We’ve scattered the enemy, 
that’s what we’ve been and done, Mr. Vin- 
: cent. There aint one of them as will dare 
r show face in Salem. We was unanimous, 
i sir — wnanimous, that’s what we tvas ! I 
: never see such a triumph in our coni;^ection. 
{ Hurrah ! If it warn’t miss as is ill, I could 
. give it you all over again, cheers and all.” 

“ I am glad you were pleased,” said Vin- 
•» cent, with an effort ; “ but I will not ask you 
I for such a report of the proceedings.” 

“ Pleased ! I’ll tell you one thing as I 
! was sorry for, sir,” said Tozer, somewhat 
i subdued in his exultation by the pastor’s 
calmness — “ I did it for the best ; but see- 
i ing as things have turned out so well, I am 
1! as sorry as I can be — and that is, that you 
wasn’t there. It was from expecting some 
unpleasantness as I asked you not to come ; 
I but things turning out as they did, it would 
\ have done your heart good to see ’em, Mr. 
I Vincent. Salem folks has a deal of sense 
when you put things before them effective. 
And then you’d only have had to say three 
j words to them on the spur of the moment, 

I and all was settled and done with, and every- 
thing put straight; which would have let 
them settle down steady, sir, at once, and 
not kept no excitement, as it were, hanging 
about” 


285 

“ Yes,” said the minister, who was moving 
about his papers, and did not look up. The 
butterman began to be alarmed ; he grew 
more and more enthusiastic the less i espouse 
he met with. 

“ It’s a meeting as will tell in the connec- 
tion,” said Tozer, with unconscious fore- 
sight ; “ a candid mind in a congregation 
aint so general as you and me would like to 
see, Mr. Vincent, and it takes a bit of a trial 
like this, sir, and opposition, to bring out 
the real attachment as is between a pastor 
and a flock.” 

“ Yes,” said Vincent again. The deacon 
did not know what to make of the minister. 
Had he been piqued and angry, Tozer thought 
he might have known how to manage him, 
but this coldness was an alarming and mys- 
terious symptom which he was unequal to. 
In his embarrassment and anxiety the good 
butterman stumbled upon the very subject 
from which, had he known the true state of 
affairs, he would have kept aloof. 

“ And the meeting as was to be to-mor- 
row night ? ” said Tozer ; “ there aint no 
need for explanations now — a word or two 
out of the pulpit is all as is wanted, just to 
say as it’s all over, and you’re grateful for 
their attachment, and so forth ; you know a 
deal better, sir, how to do it nor me. And 
about the meeting as was called for to-mor- 
row night? — me and the missis were think- 
ing, though it’s sudden, as it might be turned 
into a tea-meeting, if you w'as agreeable, 
just to make things pleasant ; or if that aint 
according to your fancy, as I’m aware you’re 
not one as likes tea-meetings, we might send 
round, Mr. Vincent, to all the seat-holders 
to say as it’s given up ; I’d do one or the 
other, if you’d be advised by me.” 

“Thank you — but I can’t do either one or 
the other,” said the Nonconformist. “I 
w'ould not have asked the people to meet me 
if I had not had something to say to them — 
and this night’s business, you understand,” 
said Vincent, with a little pride, “ has made 
no difference in me.” 

“ No, sir, no — to be sure not,” said the 
perplexed butterman, much bewildered ; 
“ but two meetings on two nights consecu- 
tive is running the flock hard, it is. I’d give 
up to-morrow, Mr. Vincent, if I was you.” 

To this insinuating address the minister 
made no answer — he only shook his head. 
Poor Tozer, out of his exultation, fell again 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


286 SALEM CHAPEL. 


into the depths. The blow was so unlooked 
for that it overwhelmed him. 

“ You’ll not go and make no reflections, 
sir ? ” said the troubled deacon ; “ bygones 
is bygones. You’ll not bring it up against 
them, as they didn’t show that sympathy 
they might have done ? You’ll not make no 
reference to nobody in particular, Mr. Vin- 
cent ? When a flock is conscious as they’ve 
done their dooty and stood by their pastor, it 
aint a safe thing, sir, not to turn upon them, 
and rake up things as is past. If you’ll take 
my advice, sir, as wishes you well, and hasn’t 
no motive but your good. I’d not hold that 
meeting, Mr. Vincent ; or, if you’re bent 
upon it, say the word, and we’ll set to work 
and give ’em a tea-meeting, and make all 
things comfortable. But if you was pru- 
dent, sir, and would go by my advice, one 
or the other of them two is what I would 
do.” 

“ Thank you, Tozer, all the same,” said 
Vincent^ who, notwithstanding his pre-occu- 
pation, saw the good butterman’s anxiety, 
and appreciated it. “ I know very well that 
all that is pleasant to-night is owing to you. 
Don’t suppose I don’t understand how you’ve 
fought for me ; but now the business is mine, 
and I can take no more advice. Think no 
more of it j you have done all that you could 
do.” 

I have done my humble endeavour, sir, 
as is my dooty, to keep things straight,” 
said the deacon, doubtfully ; and if you’d tell 
what was in your mind, Mr. Vincent ” 

But the young Nonconformist gathered up 
his papers, closed his desk, and held out his 
hand to the kind-hearted butterman. “ My 
sister has come back almost from the grave 
to-night,” said Vincent ; “ and we are all, for 
anything I can see, at the turning-point of 
our lives. You have done all you can do, 
and I thank you heartily ; but now the busi- 
ness is in my hands.” 

This was all the satisfaction Tozer got 
from the minister. He went home much 
discouraged, not knowing what to make of 
it, but did not confide his fears even to his 
wife, hoping that reflection would change the 
pastor’s mind, and resolved to make another 
efibrt to-morrow. And so the night fell over 
the troubled house. In the sick-room a 
joyful agitation had taken the place of the 
dark and hopeless calm. Susan, roused to 
life, lay leaning against her mother, looking 


at the child asleep on the sofa by her, un- 
conscious of the long and terrible interval 
between the danger which that child had 
shared, and the delicious security to which 
her mind had all at once awakened. To 
Susan’s consciousness, it appeared as if her 
mother had suddenly risen out of the mists, 
and delivered the two helpless creatures who 
had suffered together. She could not press 
close enough to this guardian of her life. 
She held her arms round her, and laid her 
cheek against the widow’s with the depen- 
dence of a child upon her mother’s bosom. 
Mrs. Vincent sat upon the bed supporting 
her, herself supported in her weariness by 
love and joy, two divine attendants who go 
but seldom together. The two talked in 
whispers, — Susan because of her feebleness, 
the mother in the instinct of caressing ten- 
derness. The poor girl told her story in 
broken syllables — broken by the widow’s 
kisses and murmurs of sympathy, of w'on- 
der and love. Healing breathed upon the 
stricken mind and feeble frame as the tw^o 
clung together in the silent night, always 
with an unspoken reference to the beautiful, 
forlorn creature on the sofa — that visible 
symbol of all the terrors and troubles past. 
“ I told her my mother would come to save 
us,” said poor Susan. When she dropped 
to sle^p at last, the mother leant her aching 
frame upon some pillows, afraid to move, 
and slept too, supreme protector, in her ten- 
der weakness, of these tw’o young lives. 
As she woke from time to time to see her 
child sleeping by her side, thoughts of her 
son’s deliverance stole across Mrs. Vincent’s 
mind to sweeten her repose. The watch- 
light burned dimly in the room, and threw a 
gigantic shadow of her little figure, half 
erect on the side of the bed, still in her 
black gown and the close white cap, w'hich 
could not be less than dainty in its neatness, 
even in that vigil, upon the further wall. 
The widow slept only in snatches, waking 
often and keeping awake, as people do 
when they grow old; her thoughts, ever 
alive and active, varying between her proj- 
ects for the future, to save Susan from all 
painful knowledge of her own story, and 
the thankful recollection of Arthur’s rescue 
from his troubles. From echoes of Tozer’s 
speech, and of the cheers of the flock, her 
imagination wandered oif into calculations 
of how she could find another place of hab- 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 287 


- itation as pleasant, perhaps, as Lonsdale, 
and even to the details of her removal from 
thence, what portions of her furniture she 
would sell, and which take with her. “ For 
now that Arthur has got out of his troubles, 
we must not stay to get him into fresh diffi- 
culties with his flock,” she said to herself, 
with a momentary ache in her thankful 
heart ; and so dropped asleep for another 
half-hour, to W'ake again presently, and enter 
anew into the whole question. Such was 
the w^ay in which Mrs. Vincent passed that 
agitated but joyful night. 

In the adjoining room Arthur sat up late 
over his papers. He was not writing, or 
doing any work ; for hours together he sat 
leaning his head on his hand, gazing intently 
at the lamp, which his mother had adjusted, 
until his eyes were dazzled, and the gloom 
of the room around became spotted with 
discs of shade. Was he to permit the nat- 
ural gratification into which Tozer’s success 
had reluctantly moved him, to alter his re- 
solve ? Was he to drop into his old hari^ss 
and try again ? or was he to carry out his 
purpose in the face of all entreaties and in- 
.ducements ? The natural inclination to 
adopt the easiest course — and the equally 
natural, impetuous, youthful impulse to take 
the leap to which he had made up his mind, 
and dash forth in the face of his difficulties 
— gave him abundant occupation for his 
thoughts as they contended against each 
other. He sat arguing the question within 
himself long after his fii’e had sunk into 
ashes. When the penetrating cold of the 
night drove him at last to bed, the question 
was still dubious. Even in his sleep the 
uneasy perplexity pursued him; — a matter 
momentous enough, though nobody but 


Tozer — who was as restless as the minister, 
and disturbed his wife by groans and mur- 
murs, of which, when indignantly woke up 
to render an account, he could give no ex- 
planation — knew or suspected anything. 
Whether to take up his anchors altogether 
and launch out upon that sea of life, of 
which, much as he had discussed it in his 
sermons, the young Nonconformist knew 
next to nothing. The widow would not 
have mused so quietly with her wakeful eyes 
in the dim room next to him, had she known 
what discussions were going on in Arthur’s 
mind. As for the congregation of Salem, 
they slept soundly, with an exhilarating sen- 
sation of generosity and goodness, — all ex- 
cept the Pigeons, who were plotting schism, 
and had already in their eye a vacant Tem- 
perance Hall, W’here a new preaching station 
might be organized under the auspices of 
somebody who would rival Vincent. The 
triumphant majority, however, laughed at 
the poulterer, and anticipated, with a pleasur- 
able expectation, the meeting of next night, 
and the relief and delight of the pastor, who 
would find he had no explanations to make, 
but only his thanks to render to his gener- 
ous flock. The good people concluded that 
they would all stop to shake hands with 
him after the business was over. “For it’s 
as good as receiving of him again, and giv- 
ing him the right hand of fellowship,” saffi 
Mrs. Brown at the Dairy, who was entirely 
won over to the minister’s side. Only 
Tozer, groaning in his midnight visions, 
and disturbing the virtuous repose of his 
wedded partner, suspected the new cloud 
that hung over Salem. For before morning 
the minister’s mind was finally made up. 


288 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


CONCLUSION. — CHAPTER XXXIX. 

The next day dawned amid the agitations 
natural to such a crisis of affairs. Almost 
before it was daylight, before Susan had 
woke, or the young stranger stirred upon her 
sofa. Miss Smith, troubled and exemplary, 
had returned to see after her charge. Miss 
Smith w'as in a state of much anxiety and 
discomfort till she had explained to Mrs. 
Vincent all the strange circumstances in 
which she found herself ; and the widow, who 
had ventured to rise from Susan’s side, and 
had been noiselessly busy putting the room 
in order, that her child might see nothing 
that was not cheerful and orderly when she 
W’oke, was not without curiosity to hear, and 
gladly took this opportunity, before even 
Arthur w'as stirring, to understand, if she 
could, the story which was so connected with 
that of her children. She ventured to go 
into the next room with Miss Smith, where 
she could hear every movement in the ante- 
chamber. The widow found it hard to un- 
derstand all the tale. That Mrs. Hilyard 
was Mildmay’s wife, and that it was their 
child who had sought protection of all the 
world from Susan Vincent, whom the crimes 
of her father and mother had driven to the 
very verge of the grave, was so hard and dif- 
ficult to comprehend, that all the governess’s 
anxious details of how little Alice first came 
into her hands, of her mother’s motives for 
concealing her from Colonel Mildmay, even 
'of the ill-fated flight to Lonsdale — which, 
instead of keeping her safe, had carried the 
child into her father’s very presence — and 
all the subsequent events wdiich Miss Smith 
had already confided to the minister, fell 
but dully upon the ears of Susan’s mother. 
“ Her daughter — and his daughter — and she 
comes to take refuge wdth my child,” said 
the widow, with a swelling heart. Mrs. 
Vincent did not know what secret it was that 
lay heavy on the soul of the desperate 
woman who had followed her last night from 
Grove Street, but somehow, with a female 
instinct, felt, though she did not understand, 
that Mrs. Hilyard or Mrs. Mildmay, what- 
ever her name might be, was as guilty in re- 
spect to Susan as was her guilty husband — 
the man who had stolen like a serpent into 
the Lonsdale cottage and won the poor girl’s 
simple heart. Full of curiosity as she was, 
the widow’s thoughts wandered off* from 
Miss Smith’s narrative ; her heart swelled 


within her with an innocent triumph ; the 
good had overcome the evil. This child, 
over whom its father and mother had fought 
with so deadly a struggle, had flown for pro- 
tection to Susan, whom that father and 
mother had done their utmost to ruin and 
destroy. They had not succeeded, thank 
God ! Through the desert and the lions the 
widow’s Una had come victorious, stretching 
her tender virgin shield over this poor child 
of passion and sorrow. While Miss Smith 
maundered through the entire history, start- 
ing from the time when Miss Russell married 
Colonel Mildmay, the widow’s mind was en- 
tirely occupied with this wonderful victory 
of innocence over wickedness. She forgot 
the passionate despair of the mother whose 
child did not recognize her. She began im- 
mediately to contrive, with unguarded gen- 
erosity, how Susan and she, when they left 
Carlingford, should carry the stranger along 
with them, and nurse her clouded mind into 
full development. Mrs. Vincent’s trials had 
not yet taught her any practical lessons of 
worldly wisdom. Her heart was still as 
open as when, unthinking of evil, she ad- 
mitted the false Mr. Fordham into her cot- 
tage, and made a beginning of all the misery 
which seemed now, to her sanguine heart, 
to be passing away. She went back to Su- 
san’s room full of this plan. — full of tender 
thoughts towards the girl who had chosen 
Susan for her protector, and of pride and 
joy still more tender in her own child, who 
had overcome evil. It was perhaps, the 
sweetest solace which could have been of- 
fered, after all her troubles, to the minister’s 
mother. It was at once a vindication of the 
hard “ dealings ” of Providence, and of that 
strength of innocence and purity, in which 
the little w'oman believed with her heart. 

The minister himself was much less agree- 
ably moved when he found the governess in 
possession of his sitting-room. Anything 
more utterly vexatious could hardly have oc- 
curred to Vincent than to find this troubled 
good woman, herself much embarrassed and 
disturbed by her own position, seated at his 
breakfast-table on this eventful morning. 
Miss Smith was as primly uncomfortable, as 
it was natural for an elderly single woman, 
still conscious of the fact that she was un- 
married, to be, in an absolute tete-a-Ute with 
a young man. She, poor lady, was as near 
blushing as her gray and composed non- 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 289 


complexion would permit. She moved un- 
easily in her seat, and made tremulous ex- 
I planations, as Vincent, who was too young 
1 and inexperienced to be absolutely uncour- 
teous, took his place opposite to her. “I 
am sure I feel quite an intruder,” said poor 
Miss Smith ; “ but your mother, Mr. Vin- 
cent, and little Alice — and indeed I did not 
know I was to be left here alone. It must 
seem so odd to you to find a lady — dear, dear 
me ! I feel I am quite in the way,” said the 
embarrassed governess ; “ but Mrs. Mild- 
may will be here presently. I know she will 
be here directly. I am sure she would have 
come with me had she known. But she sat 
up half the night hearing what I had to tell 
her, and dropped asleep just in the morn- 
ing. She is wonderfully changed, Mr. Vin- 
cent — very, very much changed. She is so 
nervous — a thing I never could have looked 
for. I . suppose, after all, married ladies, 
however much they may object to their hus- 
bands, can’t help feeling a little when any- 
thing happens,” continued Miss Smith, 
primly ; “ and there is something so dread- 
ful in such an accident. How do you think 
it can have happened ? Could it be bis 
groom, or who could it be? but I understand 
he is getting better now ? ” 

“ Yes, I believe so,” said Vincent. 

“ I am so glad,” said Miss Smith, “ not 
that if it had been the will of Providence — I 
: would make the tea for you, Mr. Vincent, if 
you would not think it odd, and I am sure 
I Mrs. Mildmay will be here directly. They 
j were in a great commotion at Grange Lane, 
i Just now, you know, there is an excitement. 

! Though she is not a young girl, to be sure 
it is always natural. But for that I am sure 
they would all have come this morning j but 

perhaps Mr. Fordhara ” 

“Not any tea, thank you. If you have 
breakfasted, I will have the things removed. 
I have only one sitting-room, you perceive,” 
i said the minister, rather bitterly. He could 
; not be positively uncivil— his heart was too 
young and fresh to be rude to any woman ; 

I but he rang the bell with a little unnecessary 
: sharpness when Miss Smith protested that 
I she had breakfasted long before. Her words 
I excited, him with a touch beyond telling. 
I He could not, would not ask what was the 
: cause of the commotion in Grange Lane ; 
i but he walked to the window to collect him- 
I self while the little maid cleared the table, 
' CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 19 

i 


and throwing it open, looked out with the 
heart beating loud in his breast. Were these 
the bells of St. Roque’s chiming into the 
ruddy sunny air with a confused jangle of 
joy ? It was a saint’s day, no doubt — a'fes.- 
tival which the perpetual curate took delight 
in proclaiming his observance of ; or — if it 
might happen to be anything else, what was 
that to the minister of Salem, who had so 
many other things on his mind? As he 
looked out a cab drove rapidly up to the 
door— a cab from which he saw emerge Mrs. 
Hilyard and another figure, which he recog- 
nized w’ith a start of resentment. What 
possible right had this man to intrude upon 
him in this moment of fate ? The minister 
left the window hastily, and stationed him- 
self with a gloomy countenance on the hearth- 
rug. He might be impatient of the women ; 
but Fordham, inexcusable as his intrusion 
was, had to be met face to face. With a 
fiash of sudden recollection, he recalled all 
his previous intercourse with the stranger 
whose name was so bitterly interwoven with 
the history of the last six months. What 
had he ever done to wake so sharp a pang 
of dislike and injury in Vincent’s mind ? It 
was not for Susan’s sake that her brother’s 
heart closed and his countenance clouded 
against the man whose name had wrought 
her so much sorrow. Vincent had arrived 
at such a climax of personal existence that 
Susan had but a dim and secondary place in 
his thoughts. He was absorbed in his own 
troubles and plans and miseries. On the 
eve. of striking out for himself into* that bit- 
ter and unknown life in which his inexperi- 
enced imagination rejected the thought of 
any solace yet remaining, what malicious in- 
fluence brought this man here ? 

They came in together into the room, 
“ Mrs. Mildmay and Mr. Fordham ” — not 
Mrs. Hilyard : that was over; and, pre-oc- 
cupied as the minister was, he could not but 
perceive the sudden change which had come 
over the Back Grove Street needlewoman. 
Perhaps her despair had lasted as long as 
was possible for such an impatient spirit. 
She came in with the firm, steady step which 
he had observed long ago, before she had 
begun to tremble at his eye. Another new^ 
stage had’ commenced in her strange life. 
She went up to him without any hesitation, 
clear and decisive as of old. 

“ I am going away,” she said, holding out 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


290 

her hand to him, “ and so I presume are you, 
Mr. Vincent. I have come to explain every- 
thing, and see your mother. Let me see your 
mother. Mr. Fordham has come with me to 
explain to you. They think in Grange Lane 
that it is only a man who can speak to a man,” 
she went on, with the old movement of her thin 
lips ; “ and that now I have come to life again, 
I must not manage my own affairs. I am go- 
ing back to society and the world, Mr. Vincent. 
I do not know where you are going, but here is 
somebody come to answer for me. Do they 
accept bail in a court of honor ? or will you 
still hold a woman to her parole ? for it must 
settled now.” 

“ Why must it be settled now ? ” said Vin- 
cent. He had dropped her hand and turned 
away from her with a certain repugnance. 
She had lost her power over him. At that 
moment the idea of being cruel, tyrannical 
to somebody — using his power harshly, bal- 
ancing the pain in his own heart by inflicting 
pain on another — was not unagreeable to the 
minister’s excited mind. He could have 
steeled himself just then to bring down upon 
her all the horrible penalties of the law. 
“ Why must it be settled ? ” he repeated ; 
“ why must you leave Carlingford ? I will 
not permit it.” He spoke to her but he 
looked at Fordham. The stranger was 
wrapped in a large overcoat' which concealed 
all his dress. What was his dress, or his 
aspect, or the restrained brightness in . his 
eyes to the minister of Salem ? But Vin- 
cent watched him narrowly with a jealous 
inspectioti. In Fordham’s whole appear- 
ance there was the air of a man to whom 
something was about to happen, which ag- 
gravated to the fever-point the dislike and 
opposition in Vincent’s heart. 

“ I will be answerable for Mrs. Mildmay,” 
said Fordham, with an evident response on 
his side to that opposition and dislike. Then 
he paused, evidently perceiving the necessity 
of conciliation. “ Mr. Vincent,” he .contin- 
ued, with some earnestness, “ we all under- 
stand and regret deeply the inconvenience — 
I mean the suffering— that is to say, the in- 
jury and misery which these late occurrences 
must have caused you. I know how well — 
that is, how generously, how nobly — you 
have behaved ” 

Here Mr. Fordham came to a pause in ; 
some confusion. To express calm acknowl- 
edgments to a man for his conduct in a 


matter which has been to him one of unmit- 
igated disaster and calamity, requires an 
amount of composure which few people pos- 
sess when at the height of personal happi- 
ness. The minister drew back, and with a 
slight bow, and a restraint which was very 
natyral and not unbecoming in his circum- 
stances, looked on at the confusion of the 
speaker without any attempt to relieve it. 
He had offered seats to his visitors, but he 
himself stood on the hearth-rug, dark and 
silent, giving no assistance in the explana- 
tion. He had not invited the explanation — 
it must be matiaged now as the others might, 
without any help from him. 

“ I have seen Colonel Mildmay,” contin- 
ued Mr. Fordham, after a confused pause. 
“ If it can be any atonement to you to know 
how much he regrets all that has happened, 
so far as your family is concerned — how fully 
he exonerates Miss Vincent, who was all 
along deceived, and who. would not have re- 
mained a moment with him had she not been 
forcibly detained. Mildmay declares she 
met with nothing but respect at his hands,” 
continued the embarrassed advocate, lower- 
ing his voice ; “ he says ” 

“ Enough has been said on the subject,” 
said Vincent, restraining himself with a vio- 
lent effort. 

“ Yes — I beg your pardon, it is quite true 
— enough has been said,” cried Fordham, 
with an appearance of relief. Here, at least, 
was one part of his difficult mediation over. 
“ Mildmay will not,” he resumed, after a 
pause, “ tell me or any one else who it was 
that gave him his wound — that is a secret, 
he says, between him and his God and an- 
other. Whoever that other may be,” con- 
tinued Fordham, with a quick look towards 
Mrs. Mildmay, “ he is conscious of having 
wronged — him — and will take no steps 
against — him. This culprit, it appears, must 
be permitted to escape — you think so ? — > 
worse evils might be involved if we were to 
demand — his — punishment. Mr. Vincent, I 
beg you to take this into consideration. It 
could be no advantage to you ; the innocent 
shall not suffer — but — the criminal — must be 
permitted to escape.” 

“ I do not see the necessity,” said Vincent, 
between his teeth. 

“ No, no,” said Mrs. Mildmay, suddenly. 
“ Escape ! who believes in escape ? Mr. 
Vincent knows better. Hush, you are a 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 291 


' happy man just now — you are not qualified 
to judge ; but we know better. Escape ! — 
he means from prisons and such like,” she 
continued, turning to Vincent with a half- 
disdainful wave of her hand towards her 
companion. “ But you know, and so do I, 
( that there is no escape — not in this world. 

1 know nothing about the next,” said the 
' strange woman, curbing once more the flush 
of excitement which had overpowered her as 
she spoke — “ nothing ; neither do you, 
though you are a priest. But there is enough 
of retribution here. The criminal — Mr. Vin- 
cent — you know — will not escape.” 

She spoke these last words panting, with 
pauses between, for breath. She was afraid 
of him again ; his blankness, his passive op- 
position, drove her out of her composure. 
She put her hands together under her shawl 
with a certain dumb entreaty, and fixed upon 
him her eager eyes. They -were a strange 
group altogether. Miss Smith, who had 
still lingered at the door notwithstanding 
Mrs. Mildmay’s imperative gesture of dis- 
missal — out of hearing, but not out of sight 
— suffered some little sound to escape her at 
this critical moment ; and when her patroness 
turned round upon her with those dreadful 
eyes, fled with precipitation, taking refuge 
! in Mrs. Vincent’s room. The table, still 
! covered with its white cloth, stood between 
! that dismayed spectator before she disap- 
I peared finally, and the little company who 
i were engaged in this silent conflict. Beside 
I it sat Mrs. Mildmay, with a renewed panic 
I of fear rising in her face. Fordham, con- 
siderably disturbed, and not knowing what 
• to say, stood near her buttoning and unbut- 
. toning his overcoat with impatient fingers, 

. anxious to help her, but still more anxious 
to be gone. The minister stood facing them 
I all, with compressed lips, and eyes which 
. looked at nobody. He was wrapt in a silent 
' dumb resistance to all entreaties and argu- 
; ments, watching Fordham’s gestures, Ford- 
. ham’s looks, with a jealous but secret sus- 
j picion. His heart was cruel in its bitterness, 
i He for whom Providence had no joys in 
I store, to whom the light was fading which 
i made life sweet, w'as for this moment supe- 
\ rior to the happy man who stood embar- 
rassed and impatient before him ; and gen- 
erous as his real nature was, it was not in 
him, in this moment of darkness, to let the 
' opportunity go. 


“ The innocent have suffered already,” said 
Vincent; “ all but madness, all but death. 
Why should the criminal escape ? — go back 
into society, the society of good people, per- 
haps strike some one else more effectually ? 
AVhy should I betray justice, and let the 
criminal escape ? My sister’s honor and 
safety are mine, and shall be guarded, who- 
ever suffers. I will not permit her to go.” 

“ But I offer to be answ’erable for her ap- 
pearance,” said Fordham, hastily. “I un- 
dertake to produce her if need be. You 
know me. I am a — relation of the family. 
I am a man sufficiently known to satisfy* any 
magistrate. You have no legal right to de- 
tain her. What would you have more ? Is 
not my guarantee enough for you ? ” 

“ No,” said Vincent, slowly. The two 
men stood defiant opposite to each other, 
contending for this woman, whom neither 
of them looked at, for whom neither of them 
cared. She, in the mean time, sat still in an 
agony of suspense^and concealed anguish, 
with her eyes fixed on Vincent’s face. She 
knew very well it was not of her that either 
of the two was thinking ; yet it was her fate, 
perhaps her very life, which hung trembling 
in the balance. A smothered sighing sob 
came from her breast. She was silenced for 
the first time in her life. She had escaped 
her crime ; but all its material consequences, 
shame and punishment, still hung over her 
head. After God himself had freed her from 
the guilt of blood — after the injured man 
himself had forgiven her — when all was clear 
for her escape into another life — was this an 
indignant angel, with flaming sword and 
averted face, that barred the way -of the fu- 
gitive ? Beyond him, virtue and goodness, 
and all the fruits of repentance, shone before 
the eyes which . had up to this time seen but 
little attraction in them — all was so sweet, 
so easy, so certain; if but she were free. Her 
worn heart sighed to get forth into that way 
of peace. She could have fallen on her 
knees before the stern judge who kept her 
back, and held over her head the cloud of 
her own ill-doings, but dared not, in her par- 
oxysm of fear and half-despair. A groaning, 
sighing sob, interrupted and broken, came 
from her exhausted breast. Just as she had 
recovered herself— as she had escaped — as 
remorse and misery had driven her to yearn 
after a better life, to be cast down again into 
this abyss of guilt and punishment ! She 


292 SALEM CHAPEL. 


trembled violently as she clasped her poor 
hands under her shawl. Composure and 
self-restraint were impossible in this terrible 
suspense. 

Her cry went to Fordham’s heart ; and, 
besides, he was in desperate haste, and 
could afford to sink his pride, and make an 
appeal for once. He made a step forward, 
and put out his hand with an entreating gest- 
ure. “ Do you hear her ? ” he cried, sud- 
denly. “ You have had much to bear your- 
self ; have pity on her. Let her off — leave 
her to God. She has been ill, and will die, 
if you have no mercy. You who are a min- 
ister ” 

In his energy his overcoat fell back for a 
moment ; underneath he was in full dress, 
which showed strangely in that gray spring 
morning. Vincent turned round upon him 
with a smile. The young man’s face was 
utterly pale, white to the lips. The bells 
were jangling joy in his ears. He was not 
master of himself. “ We detain you, Mr. 
Fordham ; you have other affairs in hand,” 
he said. “ I am a minister only — a Dissent- 
ing minister — unworthy to have such an in- 
tercessor pleading with me ; but you, at 
least,” cried poor Vincent, with an attempt 
at sarcasm, “ do not want my pity ; there 
is nothing between us that requires explana- 
tion. I will arrange with Mrs. Mildmay 
alone.” He turned away and went to the 
window when he had spoken. There he 
stood, with his back to them, listening to the 
bells of St. Koque’s, as they came and went 
in irregular breaks upon the wind. His 
heart was bursting with wild throbs of bitter- 
ness and despair ; it was all he could do to 
keep the tumult down, and contain himself 
in that flush of passion. He turned away 
fropi them, and stood gazing out at that te- 
dious window into the blank world. What 
did it matter ? Let her escape if she would 
— let things go as they might ; nothing was 
of any further importance — certainly on earth 
—perhaps even in heaven. 

“ I will go away — I can do you no good — 
I should only lose my temper ; and time 
presses,” said Mr. Fordham, with a flush of 
resentment on fqs face, as he turned to the 
anxious woman behind him. What could 
he do ? He could not quarrel with this an- 
gry man in his own house on such a day. 
He could not keep happier matters waiting. 
He would not risk the losing of his temper 


and his time at this moment of all others. 
He went away with a sensation of defeat, 
which for half an hour materially mitigated 
his happiness. But he was happy, and the 
happy are indulgent judges both of their own 
conduct and of others.* As for the minister, 
he was roused again when he saw his rival 
jump into the cab at the door, and drive off 
alone down the street, which was lively with 
the early stir of day. The sun had just broken 
through the morning clouds, and it was into 
a ruddy perspective of light that the stranger 
disappeared as he went off towards Grange 
Lane. Strange contrast of fate ! While 
Fordham hastejied down into the sunshine 
to all the joy that awaited him there, Tozer, 
a homely, matter-of-fact figure in the ruddy 
light, was crossing the street towards the 
minister’s door. Vincent went away from 
the window again, with pangs of an impa- 
tience and intolerance of his own lot which 
no strength of mind could subdue. All the 
gleams of impossible joy which had lighted 
his path in Carlingford had now gone out, 
and left him in darkness; and here* came 
back, in undisturbed possession, all the 
meaner circumstances of his individual des- 
tiny. Salem alone remained to him out of 
the wreck of his dreams, except when he 
turned back and discovered her — the one 
tragic thread in the petty history — this wo- 
man whose future life for good or for evil he 
held in his avenging hands. 

Mrs. Mildmay was stiU seated by the ta- 
ble. *She had regained command of herself. 
She looked up to him with gleaming eyes 
when he approached her. “ Mr. Vincent, I 
keep my parole — I am waiting your pleas- 
ure,” she said, never removing her eyes from 
his face. It was at this moment that Mrs. 
Vincent, who had from the window of Susan’s 
chamber seen the cab arrive and go away, 
with some curiosity, came into the room. 
The widow wanted to know who her son’s 
visitors were, and what had brought them. 
She came in with a little eagerness, but was 
brought to a sudden stand-still by the appear- 
ance of Mrs. Mildmay. Why was this woman 
here ? what had she to do with the minister ? 
Mrs. Vincent put on her little air of simple 
dignity. She said, “ I beg your pardon ; I 
did not know my son was engaged,” W'ith a 
courtesy of disapproving politeness to the 
unAvelcome visitor. With a troubled look at 
Arthur, who looked excited and gloomy 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD 


enough to justify any uncomfortable imagi- 
nations about him, his mother turned away 
somewhat reluctantly. She did not feel that 
it was quite right to leave him exposed to 
the wiles of this “ designing woman ; ” but 
the widow’s own dignity was partly at stake. 
All along she had disapproved of this strange 
friendship, and she could not countenance it 
now. 

“Your mother is going away,” said Mrs. 
^lildmay, with a restrained outcry of de- 
spair : “ is no one to be permitted to medi- 
ate between us ? You are a man and cruel ; 
you are in trouble, and you think you will 
avenge yourself. No, no — I don’t mean 
what I say. Your son is a — a true knight, 
Mrs. Vincent ; I told you so before. He 
will never be hard upon a woman : if I had 
not known that, why should I have trusted 
him ? I came back, as he knows, of my own 
will. Don’t go away ; I am willing you 
should know — the whole,” said the excited 
woman, with a sudden pause, turning upon 
Vincent, her face blanching into deadly 
whiteness— “ the whole — I consent ; let her 
be the judge. Women are more cruel than 
men ; but I saved her daughter — I am will- 
ing that she should hear it all.” 

She sat down again on the seat from which 
she had risen. A certain comfort and re- 
lief stole over her face. She was appealing 
to the general heart of humanity against 
this one man who knew her secret. It 
might be hard to hear the story of h^ owm 
sin — but it was harder to be under the sti- 
fling sway of one who knew it, and who had 
it in his power to denounce her. She ceased 
to tremble as she looked at the widow’s 
troubled face. It was a new tribunal before 
which she stood ; perhaps here her provoca- 
tions might be acknowledged — her soul ac- 
quitted of the burden from which it could 
never escape. As the slow moments passed 
on, and the minister did not speak, she grew 
impatient of the silence. “ Tell her,” she 
said, faintly — it was a new hope which thus 
awoke in her heart. 

But while Mrs. Mildmay sat waiting, and 
while the widow drew near, not without 
some judicial state in the poise of her little 
figure, to hear the explanation which she 
felt she was entitled to, Tozer’s honest, 
troubled fact looked in at the door. It put 
a climax upon the confusion of the morning. 
The good butterman looked on in some sur- 


293 

prise at this strange assemblage, recognizing 
dim4y the haze of an excitement of which he 
knew nothing. He was acquainted, to some 
extent, with the needlewoman of Back 
Grove Street. He had gone to call on her 
once at the solicitation of the anxious 
Brown, who had charge of her district but 
did not feel himself competent to deal with 
the* spiritual necessities of such a penitent; 
and Tozer remembered well that her state 
of mind had not been satisfactory — “ not 
what was to be looked for in a person as had 
the means of grace close at hand, and at- 
tended regular at Salem.” He thought she 
must have come at this unlucky moment to 
get assistance of some kind from the minis- 
ter — “ as if he had not troubles enough of 
his own,” Tozer said to himself: but the 
deacon was not disposed to let his pastor be 
victimized in any such fashion. This, at 
least, w'as a matter in which he felt fully en- 
titled to interfere. 

“ Good-mornin’, ma’am,” said the worthy 
butterman ; “ good-mornin’, Mr. Vincent — 
it’s cold, but it’s seasonable for the time of 
year. What I wanted was a word or two 
with the pastor, ma’am, if he’s disengaged. 
It aint what I approve,” continued Tozer, 
fixing his eyes with some sternness upon 
the visitor, “ to take up a minister’s time in 
the morning when he has the work of a flock 
on his hands. My business being sich as 
can’t wait, is difierent ; but them as are in 
want of assistance, one way or another, which 
is a thing as belongs to the deacons, have no 
excuse, not as I can see, for disturbing the 
pastor. It aint a thing as I would put up 
with,” continued Tozer, with increasing se- 
verity ; “ the charities of the flock aint in 
Mr. Vincent’s hands ; it’s a swindling of his 
time to come in upon him of a morning if 
there aint a good reason ; and, as far as I 
am concerned, it would be enough to shut 
my heart up again’ giving help — that’s how 
it would work on me.” 

Mrs. Mildmay was entirely inattentive to 
the first few words of this address, but the 
pointed application given by the speaker’s 
eyes called her attention presently. She 
gazed at him as he proceeded, with a grad- 
ual lightening of her w'orn and anxious face. 
While Mrs. Vincent did all she could, with 
anxious looks and little deprecatory ges- 
tures, to stop the butterman, the counte- 
nance of her visitor cleared by one of those 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


294 

strange, sudden changes which the minister 
had noted so often. Her lips relaxed, her 
eyes gleamed with a sudden flash of amuse- 
ment. Then she glanced around, seeing 
with quick observation not only the absurd- 
ity of Tozer’s mistake, but the infallible ef- 
fect it had in changing the aspect of affairs. 
The minister had turned away, not without 
a grim, impatient smile at the corner of,his 
mouth. The minister’s mother, shocked in 
all her gentle politeness, was eagerly watch- 
ing her opportunity to break in and set the’ 
perplexed deacon right. The culprit, who 
had been on her trial a moment before, drew 
a long breath of utter relief. Now she had 
escaped — the crisis was over. Her quick 
spirit rose with a sense of triumph — a sen- 
sation of amusement. She entered eagerly 
into it, leaning forward with eyes that shone 
and gleamed upon her accuser, and a mock 
solemnity of attention which only her des- 
perate strain of mind and faculties could 
have enabled her to assume so quickly. 
When the butterman came»to a pause, Mrs. 
Vincent rushed in breathlessly to the rescue. 

“ Mr. Tozer — Mr. Tozer ! this lady is — a 
— a friend of ours,” cried the minister s 
mother, with looks that were much more 
eloquent of her distress and horror than 
any words. She had no time to say more, 
when the aggrieved individual herself broke 
in,— 

“ Mr. Tozer knows I have been one of 
the flock since ever Mr. Vincent came,” 
said the strange woman. “ I have gone to 
all the meetings, and listened faithfully to 
the pastor every time he has preached ; and 
would you judge me unworthy of relief be- 
cause I once came to see him in. a morning ? 
That is hard laws; but the minister will 
speak for me. The minister knows me,” she 
went on, turning to Vincent, “ and he and 
his mother have been very charitable to a 
poor w’oman, Mr. Tozer. You will not ex- 
clude me from the* Salem charities for this 
one offence ? Remember that I am a mem- 
ber of the flock.” 

“ Not a church-member as I know,” said 
the sturdy deacon — “not meaning no of- 
fence, if I’ve made a mistake — one sitting, 
as far as I remember ; but a — lady — as is a 
friend of Mrs. Vincent’s ” 

Here Tozer paused, abashed but suspi- 
cious, not disposed to make any further 
apology. That moment was enough to drive 


this lighter interlude from the vigilant soul 
which, in all its moods, w'atched what was 
going on' with a quick apprehension of the 
opportunities of the moment. All her per- 
ceptions, quickened as they were by anxiety 
and fear, were bent on discovering an outlet 
for her escape, and she saw her chance now. 
She got up wearily, leaning on the table, as 
indeed she needed to lean, and looked into 
Mrs. Vincent’s face : “May I see my child ?” 
she said, in a voice that went to the heart of 
the widow. The minister’s mother could 
not resist this appeal. She saw the trem- 
bling in her limbs, the anxiety in her eye. 
“Arthur, I will see to Mrs. Mildmay. Mr. 
Tozer has something to say to you, and we 
must not occupy your time,” said the tender 
little woman, in whose gentle presence there 
was protection and shelter even for the pas- 
sionate spirit beside her. Thus the two 
went away together. If there had ever been 
any revengeful intention in Vincent’s mind, 
it had disappeared by this time. He, too, 
breathed deep with relief. The criminal had 
escaped, at least out of his hands. He w'as 
no longer compelled to take upon himself 
the office of an avenger. 

CHAPTER XL. 

“ I HOPE, sir, as I haven’t said anything 
as gives offence ? — it was far from my mean- 
ing,” said Tozer ; “ not as the — person — is 
a church-member, being only a seatholder 
for one sittin’, as is down in the books. I 
wouldn’t have come over, not so early, Mr. 
Vincent, if it wasn’t as I was wishful to try 
if you’d listen to reason about the meetin’ as 
is appointed to be to-night. It aint no in- 
terest of mine, not so far as money goes, nor 
nothing of that kind. It’s you as I’m 
a-thinking of. I don’t mind standing the 
expense out of my own pocket, if so be as 
you’d give in to make it a tea-meetin’. I 
don’t know as you’d need to do nothing but 
take the chair and make yourself agreeable. 
Me and Brown and the women w^ould man- 
age the rest. It would be a pleasant sur- 
prise, that’s what it would be,” said the good 
butterman; “and Phoebe and some more 
would go down directly to make ready : and 
I don’t doubt as there’s cakes and buns 
enough in Carlingford, Mr. Vincent, sir, if 
you’d but bend your mind to^t and con- 
sent.” 

“ I am going out,” said Vincent ; “ I have 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


— something to do ; don’t detain me, Tozer. 
I must have this morning to myself.” 

“ I’ll walk with you, sir, if I aint in the 
way,” said the deacon, accompanying the 
young man’s restless steps down-stairs. 
“ They tell me miss is a deal better, and all 
things is going on well. 1 wouldn’t be med- 
dlesom^ Mr. Vincent, not of my own will 
but when matters is settling, sir, if you’d 
but hear reason ! There can’t nothing but 
harm come of more explanations. I never 
had no confidence in explanations, for my 
part ; but pleasant looks and the urns a-smok- 
ing, and a bit of green on the wall, as Phoebe 
and the rest could put up in no time ! and 
just such a speech as was agreeable to wind 
up with — a bit of an anecdote, or poetry 
abou^ friends as is better friends after they’ve 
spoke their minds and had it out — that’s the 
thing as would settle Salem, Mr. Vincent. 
I don’t speak, not to bother you, sir, but for 
your good. There aint no difficulty in it ; 
it’s easier a deal than being • serious and 
opening up all things over again ; and as 
for them as would like to dictate ” 

“ I am not thinking of Salem,” said the 
minister ; “ I have many other things to dis- 
tract me ; for Heaven’s sake if you have any 
pity, leave me alone to-day.” 

“ But you’ll givn in to make it a tea-meet- 
in’ ? ” said the anxious butterman, pausing 
at his own door. 

Tozer did not make out the minister’s re- 
ply. It is difficult to distinguish between a 
nod and a shake of the head, under some 
circumstances — and Vincent did not pause 
to give an articufate answer, but left his 
champion to his own devices. It seemed to 
Vincent to be a long time since Fordham 
left his house — and he was possessed with a 
fever of impatience to see for himself what 
was being transacted down yonder in the 
sunshine, where the spire of St. Koque’s ap- 
peared in the distance through the ruddy 
morning haze. The bells had ceased, and 
all was quiet enough in Grange Lane. Quite 
quiet — a few ordinary passengers in th6 tran- 
quil road, nursemaids and children — and the 
calm green doors closing in the concealed 
houses, as if no passion or agitation could 
penetrate them. The door of Lady West- 
ern’s garden was ajar. The minister crossed 
over and looked in with a wistful, despairing 
hope of seeing something that would contra- 
dict his conclusion. The house was basking 


295 

in the spring sunshine — the door open, some 
of the windows open, eager servants hover- 
ing about, an air of expectation over all. 
With eyes full of memories, the minister 
looked in at the half-open door, which one 
time and another had been to him the gate 
of paradise. Within where the red gerani- 
ums and verbenas had once brightened all 
the borders, were pale crocuses and flowers 
of early spring — the limes were beginning 
to bud, the daisies to grow among the grass. 
The winter was over in that sheltered and 
sunny place ; Nature .herself stood sweet 
within the protecting walls, and gathered all 
the tenderest sweets of spring to greet the 
bride in the new beginning of her life. It 
was but a glance, but the spectator, in the 
bitterness of his heart, did not lose a single 
tint or line ; and just then the joy-bells 
burst out once more from St. Boque’s. Poor . 
Vincent drew back from the door as the sud- 
den sound stung him to the heart. Nothing 
had any pity for him — all the world, and 
every voice and breath therein, sided with 
the others in their joy. He went on blindly, 
without thinking where he was going, with 
a kind of dull, stubborn determination in his 
heart, not to turn back in his wretchedness 
even from the sight of the happy procession 
which he knew must be advancing to meet 
him. A pang more or less, what did it mat- 
ter ? And for the last time he would look 
on Her who was nothing in the world to him 
now — who never could have been anything 
— yet who had somehow shed such streams 
of light upon the poor minister’s humble 
path, as no reality in all his life had ever 
shed before. He paused on the edge of thel^ 
road as he saw the carriage coming. It was 
one of those moments when a man’s entire 
life becomes apparent to him in long per- 
spective of past and future, he himself and 
all the world standing still between. The 
bells rang on his heart, with echoes from the 
wheels and the horses’ feet coming up ii^ 
superb pride and triumph. Heaven ano^ 
earth were glad for her in her joy. He, in 
his great trouble, stood dark in the sunshine 
and looked on. 

It was only a moment, and no more. He 
would have seen nothing but the white mist 
of the veil which surrounded her, had not 
she in her loveliness and kindness perceived 
him, and bent forward in the carriage with 
a little motion of her hand calling the atten- 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


296 

tion of her unseen bridegroom to that figure 
on the way. At sight of that movement, 
the unhappy young man started with an in- 
tolerable pang, and went on heedless where 
he was going. He could not control the 
momentary passion. She had never harmed 
him — never meant to dazzle him with her 
beauty, or trifie with his love or break his 
heart. It was kind as the sunshine, this 
sweet bridal face leaning out with that mo- 
mentary glance of recognition. She would 
have given him her kind hand, her sweet 
smile as of old, had they met more closely — 
no remorseful consciousness was in her eyes ; 
but neither the bells, nor the flowers, nor 
the sunshine, went with such a pang to poor 
Vincent’s heart as did that look of kindness. 
It was all unreal then — no foundation at all 
in it ? not enough to call a passing color to 
her cheek, or to dim her sweet eyes on her 
bridal day ? He went down the long road 
in the insensibility of passion — seeing noth- 
ing, caring for nothing — stung to.the heart. 
No look of triumph, no female darVpf con- 
scious cruelty could have given the pod'ri^min- 
ister so bitter a wound. All her treastn-ed 
looks and smiles — the touch of her hand — lier 
words, of which he had scarcely forgotten one 
—■did they mean nothing after all ? nothinjg 
but kindness ? He had laid his heart at hp 
feet ; if she had trodden on it he could hme 
forgiven her ; but she only went on smiUng, 
and never saw the treasure in her way^/And 
this was the end. The unfortunab?"' young 
man could not give way to any outbreak of 
the passion that consumed him ; he could 
but go on hotly — on past St. Roque’s, where 
4 flowers still lay in the porch, and the open 
doors invited strangers, to the silent coun- 
try, where the fields lay callow under the 
touch of spring. Spring ! everlasting mock- 
ery of human trouble ! Here were the hedge- 
rows stirring, the secret grain beginning to 
throb conscious in the old furrows ; but life 
^itself standing still — coming to a sudden end 
in this heart which filled the young man’s 
entire frame with pulsations of anguish. All 
his existence had flowed towards this day, 
and took its termination here. His love — 
Heaven help him ! he had but one heart, and 
had thrown it away ; his work — that, too, 
was to come to nothing, and be ended ; all 
his traditions, all his hopes, were they to be 
buried in, one grave? and what was to be- 


come after of the posthumous and nameless 
life ? 

CHAPTER XLI. 

When the minister fully came to himself, 
it was after a long, rapid walk of many miles 
through the silent., fields and hazy country. 
•There the clouds cleared off from him in the 
quietness. When he began to see clfarly he 
turned back towards Carlingford. Nothing 
now stood between him and the crisis which 
henceforward must determine his personal 
affairs. He turned in the long country road, 
which he had been pursuing eagerly without 
knowing what he was doing, and gazed back 
towards the distant roofs. His heart ached 
and throbbed with the pangs that were past. 
He had a consciousness that it stirred within 
his breast, still smarting and thrilling *with 
that violent access of agony — but the climax 
was over. The strong pulsations fell into 
dull beats of indefinite pain. Now for the 
other world— the neutral-colored life. Vin- 
bent did not very well know which road he 
had taken, for he had not been thinking of 
where he was going ; but it roused him a 
little to perceive that his homeward way 
brought hini through Grove Street, and past 
Siloam Cottage, where Mr. Tufton lived. 

Mrs. Tufton was at the window, behind 
the great geranium, when the minister came 
in sight. When she saw him she tapped 
upon the pane and beckoned him to go in. 
He obeyed the summons, almost without im- 
patience, in the languor of his mind. He 
went in to find them all by the fire, just as 
they had been when he came first to Carling- 
ford. The old minister, in his arm-chair, 
holding out his flabby white hand to his dear 
young brother ; the invalid daughter still 
knitting, with cold blue eyes, always vigi- 
lant and alert, investigating everything. It 
was a mild day, and Mrs. Tufton herself had 
shifted her seat to the window, where she had 
been reading aloud as usual the Carling- 
ford Gazette. The motionless warm air of 
the little parlor, the prints of the brethren on . 
the walls, the attitudes of the living inhab- 
itants, were all unchanged from the time 
when the young minister of Salem paid his 
first visit, and chafed at Mr. Tufton’s advice, 
and heard with a secret shiver the prophecy 
of Adelaide, that “ they would kill him in 
six months.” He took the same chair, again 


CHRONICLES OF 

% 

making a little commotion among the furni- 
ture, which the size of the room made it dif- 
ficult to displace. It was with a bewildering 
sensation that he sat down in that unchange- 
able house. Had time really gone on through 
all these passions and pains, of which he was 
conscious in his heart ? or had it stood still, 
and were they only dreams ? Adelaide Tuf- 
ton, immovable in her padded chair, with 
pale blue eyes that searched through every- 
thing, had surely never once altered her po- 
sition, but had knitted away the days with a 
mystic thread like one of the Fates. Even 
the geranium did not seem to have gained 
or shed a single leaf, 

“ I have just been reading in the Gazette 
the report of last night’s meeting,” said good 
Mrs. Tufton. “ O Mr. Vincent, I was so 
glad — your dear mother herself, if she had 
been there, could not have been happier 
than I was. I hope she has seen the Ga- 
zette this morning. YoU young men al- 
ways like the Times ; but they never put 
in anything that is interesting to me in the 
‘ Times. Perhaps, if she has not seen it, 
you will put the paper in your pocket. In- 
deed, it made me as happy as if you had 
been my own son. I always say that is very 
much how Mr. Tufton and I feel for you.” 

“ Yes, it went off very well,” said the old 
minister: “ My dear young brother, it all 
depends on whether you have friends that 
know how to deal with a flock ; nothing can 
teach you that but experience. I am sorry 
I dare not go out again to-night — it cost me 
my night’s rest last night, as Mrs. Tufton 
will tell you ; but that is nothing in consid- 
eration of duty. Never think of ease to 
yourself, my dc ».r young friend, when you 
can serve a brotner ; it has always been my 

rule through life ” 

“ Mr. Vincent understands all that,” said 
Adelaide ; “ that will do, papa — we know. 

Teh me about Lady Western’s marriage, Mr. 

Vincent. I dare say you were invited, as she 
was such a friend of yours. It must have 
! made an awkwardness between you when she 
turned out to be Colonel Mildmay’s sister ; 
but, to be sure, those things don’t matter 
among people in high life. It was delight- 
ful that she should marry her old love after 
■ all, don’t you think ? Poor Sir J oseph would 
have left a different will if he had known. | mentor with the contemptuous rage and ag- 
Parted for ten years and coming together gravation which men sometimes feel towards 
again ! it is like a story in a book ” i a weak creature who insults them with im^ 


CARLINGFORD. 297 

“ I do not know the circumstances,” said 
poor Vincent. He turned to Mr. Tufton 
with a vain hope of escaping. “ I shall have • 
to bid you good-by shortly,” said the min- 
ister ; “ though it was very good of the Sa- 
lem people not to dismiss me, I prefer ” 

“ You mean to go away ? ” said Adelaide ; 

“ that will be a wonderful piece of news in 
the connection ; but I don’t think you will 
go away : there will be a deputation, and 
they will give you a piece of plate, and you 
will remain — you will not be able to resist. 
Papa never w^s a preacher to speak of,” 
continued the dauntless invalid, “but they 
gave him a purse and a testimonial when he 
retired ; and you are soft-hearted, and they 

will get the better of you ” 

“ Adelaide ! ” said Mrs. Tufton, “ Mr. 
Vincent will thfnk you out of your senses : 
indeed, Mr. Vincent, she does not mind what 
she says ; and she has had so much ill-health, 
poor child, that both her papa and I have 
given in to her too much ; but as for my 
husband’s preaching, it is well known he 
could have had many other charges if his 
duty had not called him to stay at Salem ; ■ 

invitations used to cdme ” 

“ Oh, stuff ! ” said the irreverent Ade- 
laide — “ as if Mr. Vincent did not know. 
But I will tell you about Lady Western — 
that is the romance of the day. Mr. Ford- 
ham was very poor, you know, when they 
first saw each other — only a poor barrister-^ 
and the friends interfered. Friends always 
interfere,” said the sick woman, fixing her 
pale eyes on Vincent’s face as she went on 
with her knitting ; “ and they married her 
to old Sir Joseph Western ; and so, after a 
while, she became the young dowager. She 
must have been very pretty then — she is 
beautiful now ; but I would not have mar- 
ried a widow, had I been Mr. Fordham, 
after I came into my fortune. His elder 
brother died, you know. I would not have 
married her, however lovely she had been. 
Mr. Vincent, would you ? ” 

“ Adelaide ! ” cried Mrs. Tufton, again in 
dismay. The poor minister thrust back his 
chair from the table, and came roughly 
against the stand of the great geranium, 
which had to be adjusted, and covered his 
retreat. He glanced at his > conscious tor- 


SALExM CHAPEL. 


298 

punity. But she did not show any pleasur- 
able consciousness of her triumph ; she kept 
knitting on, looking at him with her pale 
blue eyes. There was something in that 
loveless eagerness of curiosity which ap- 
palled Vincent. He got up hastily to his 
feet, and said he had something to do and 
must go away. 

“ Good-by, my dear brother,” said Mr. 
Tufton, slowly, shaking the young minister’s 
hand ; “ you will be judicious to-night ? 
The flock have stood by you, and been in- 
dulgent to your inexperience. They see 
you never meant to hurt any of their feel- 
ings. It is what I always trained my dear 
people to be — considerate to the ■ young 
preachers. Take my advice, my beloved 
young brother, and dear Tozer’s advice. 
We do all we can for yoif here, and dear 
Tozer is a tower of strength. And you 
have our prayers ; we are but a little as- 
sembly — I and my dear partner in life and 
our atflicted child — but two or three, you 
know — and we never forget you at the 
throne of grace.” 

With this parting blessing Vincent has- 
tened away. Poor little Mrs. Tufton had 
added some little effusion of motherly kind- 
ness which he did not listen to. He came 
away with a strange impression on his mind 
of that knitting woman, pale and curious, 
in her padded chair. Adelaide Tufton was 
not old — not a great many years older 4han 
himself. To him*, with the life beating so 
strong in his veins, the sight of that life in 
death was strange, almost awful. The de- 
spair, the anguish, the vivid uncertainty and 
reality of his own existence, appeared to 
him in wonderful relief against that mo- 
tionless background. If he came back here 
ten years hence, he might still find- as now 
the old man by the fire, the pale woman 
knitting in her chair, as they had been for 
these six months which had brought to the 
young minister a greater crowd of events 
than all his previous years. When he 
thought of that helpless woman, witK her 
lively thoughts and curious eyes, always 
busy and speculating about the life from 
which she was utterly shut out, a strange 
sensation of thankfulness stole over the 
young- man ; though he was miserable he 
was alive. Between him and the lovely fig- 
ure on which his heart had dwelt too long, 
rose up now this other figure which was 


not lovely. He grew stronger as he went 
home along the streets in the changed light 
of the afternoon. Siloam Cottage inter- 
posed between him and that inefiable mo- 
ment at the bridal doors ; presently Salem, 
too, wmuld interpose, and all the difficulties 
and troubles of his career. He had taken 
up life again, after that pause when the sun 
and the moon stood still and the battle 
raged. Now it was all over, and the w’orld’s 
course had begun anew. 

Mrs. Vincent was looking out for him 
when he reached his own door. He could 
see her disappear from the window above, 
where she had been standing watching. 
She came to meet him as he went up to the 
sitting-room. There was nobody now in 
that room, where the widow had been mak- 
ing everything smile for her son. The table 
was spread ; the fire bright ; the lamp ready 
to be lighted on the table. Mrs. Vincent 
had been alarmed by Arthur’s long absence, 
but she did not say so. She only made 
haste to tell him that Susan was so much 
better, and that the doctor was in such high 
spirits about her. “ After we come back 
from the meeting you are to go in and sit 
with your sister for an hour, my dear boy,” 
said his mother. “ Till that was over, we 
knew your mind would be occupied, and 
Susan would like to see you. O Arthur ! it 
will make you happy only to look at her. 
She remembers everything now ; she has 
asked me even all about the flock, and cried 
with joy to hear how things had gone off 
last night — ‘not for joy only,” said the truth- 
ful widow, “ with indignation, too, that you 
ever should have been doubted — for Susan 
thinks there is nobody like her brother ; but, 
my dear, we ought to be very thankful that j 
things have' happened so well. Everybody | 
must learn to put up with a little injustice 
in this world, particularly the pastor of a 
flock. If you will go and get ready for din- 
ner, Arthur,” said Mrs. Vincent, “I will 
light the lamp. I have taken it into my own 
hands, dear ; it is better to put it right at 
first than to be always arranging it after it 
has been put wrong. Dinner is quite ready, 
and make haste, my dear boy. I have got 
a little fish for you, and you know it will 
spoil if you keep it waiting ; and I have so 
much to tell you before we go out to the 
meeting to-night.” 

Vincent made no answer to the wistful, 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 


I inquiring look which his mother turned to 
his face as she mentioned this meeting. He 
went away with an impatient exclamation 

■ about that lamp, which seemed to him to 
: occupy half her thoughts. Mrs. Vincent 
I was full of many cares and much news 

which she had to give her son ; she was also 
deeply anxious and curious to know what he 
was going to do that night; but still she 
spared a little time for the lamp, to set the 
screw right, and light to a delicate evenness 
the well-trimmed wick. When she had 
placed it on the table, it gave her a certain 
satisfaction to see how clearly it burned, 
and how bright it made the table. “ If I 
only knew what Arthur was going to do,” 
she said to herself, with a little sigh, as she 
rang the bell for the dinner, and warned 
the little maid to be very careful with the 
fish ; “ for if it is not put very nicely on the 
table Mr. Al^icent will not have any of it,” 
said the minister’s mother, with that femi- 
nine mingling of small cares and great 
which was so incomprehensible to her son. 
When he came back and seated himself 
listlessly at the table, he never thought of 
observing the light, or taking note of the 
brightness of the room. To think of this 
business of dinner at all, inteijected into 
such a day, was almost too much for Ar- 
thur ; and he was half disgusted with him- 
I self wdien he found that, after all, he could 
i eat, and that not only for his mother’s sake. 
Mrs. Vincent talked only of Susan while the 
little maid was going and coming into the 
room ; but when they were alone she drew 
her chair a little nearer and entered upon 
! other things. 

I • “ Arthur, I had a great deal of conversa- 

I tion with Mrs. Mildmay; she told me — 
I evei 7 thing,” said the widow, growing pale. 

' “ O my dear ! when God leaves us alone to 
i our own devices, what dreadful things a sin- 
j ful creature may do ! I said you would do 
1 nothing to harm her now when Susan was 
^ safe. Hush, dear ! we must never breathe 
’ a word of it to Susan, or any one. Susan is 
1 changed, Arthur ; sometimes I am glad of 
I it, sometimes I could cry. She is not an 
\ innocent girl now. She is a woman — O Ar- 
I thur ! a great deal stronger than her mother ; 

■ she would clear herself somehow if she 
knew ; she would not bear that suspicion. 
She is more like your dear papa,” said the 
mother, wiping her eyes, “than I ever 


299 

thought to see one of my children. I can 
see his high-minded ways in her, Arthur— 
and steadier than you and me ; for you have 
my quick temper, dear. Wait just another 
moment, Arthur. This poor child d6tes 
upon Susan ; and her mother asked me,” 
said poor Mrs. Vincent pausing, and look- 
ing her son in the face, “ if — I would keep 
her with me.” 

“ Keep her with you! Let us be rid of 
them,” cried the minister ; “ they have 
brought us nothing but misery ever since w^e 
heard their names.” 

“Yes, Arthur, dear; but the poor child 
never did any one any harm. They have 
made her a ward in Chancery now. It should 
have been done long ago, but for the wicked- 
ness and the disputes ; and, mj dear boy,” 
said Mrs. Vincent, anxiously,, “',1 will have 
to leave Lonsdale, you know ; my poor child 
could not go back there ; and we will not 
stay with you in Carlingford to get you into 
trouble with your flock,” continued the 
widow, gazing wistfully in his face to see if 
she could gather anything of his purpose 
from his looks ; “ and with my little income, 
you know, it would be hard work without 
coming on you ; but all the difficulty is 
cleared away if we take this child. I was 
thinking I might take Susan abroad,” said 
the widow, with ‘a little sigh ; “ it is the best 
thing, I have always heard, after such trouule ; 
and it would be an occupation for her when 
she got better. My dear boy, don’t be hasty ; 
lyour dear father always took a little time to 
^think upon a thin’g before he would speak ; 
but you have always had my temper, Arthur. 
I woqt say any more ; we will speak of it, 
dear, in your sister’s room, when we come 
home from the meeting to-night.” 

“ I think you had better not go to the 
meeting to-night ; there will be nothing said 
to please you, mother,” said the minister, 
rising from the table, and taking his favorite 
position on the hearth-rug. His mother 
turned round frightened, but afraid to show 
her fright, determined still to look as if she 
believed everything was going well. 

“ No fine speeches, Arthur ? My dear 
boy, I always like to hear you speak. I kno\y 
you will say what you ought,” said the 
widow, smiling, with a patient determination 
in her face. Then there was a pause. “ Per- 
haps you will give me a little sketch of what 
you are going to say,” she -^ent on, with a 


300 SALEM CHAPEL. 


tender artifice, concealing her anxiety. “Your 
dear papa often did, Arthur, when anything 
was going on among the flock.” 

But Arthur made no reply. His clouded 
face filled his mother with a host of indefinite 
fears. But she saw, as she had seen so often, 
that womanish entreaties were not practica- 
ble, and that he must be left to himself. 
“ He will tell me as we go to Salem,” she said 
in her heart, to quiet its anxious throbbing. 
“ Perhaps you would like to have the room 
to yourself a little, dear,” she said aloud. 
“ I will go to Susan till it is time to leave ; 
and I know my Arthur will ask the counsel 
of God,” she added, softly, just touching his 
hand with a tender momentary clasp. It 
was all the minister could do to resist the 
look of anxious inquiry with which this little 
caress was alftcompanied ; and then she left 
him to prepare for his meeting. Whether he 
asked advice or not of his Father in heaven, 
the widow asked it for him with tears in her 
anxious eyes. She had done all that she 
could do. When the minister was left to 
himself, he opened his desk and took out the 
manuscript with which he had been busy 
last night. It was the speech he had in- 
tended to deliver, and he had been pleased 
with it. He sat down now and read it over 
to himself, by the white-covered table, on 
which his mother’s lamp burned bright. 
Sheet by sheet, as he read it over, the impa- 
tient young man tossed into the fire, with 
hasty exclamations of disgust. He was ex- 
cited ; his mind was in fiery action ; his heart 
moved to the depths. No turgid Homerton 
eloquence would do now. What he said 
must be not from the lips, but from the 
heart. 

CHAPTER XLII. 

Mrs. Vincent was ready in very good 
time for the meeting ; she brought her son 
a cup of cofiee with her own hand when she 
was dressed in her bonnet and shawl. She 
had put on her best bonnet — her newest 
black silk dress. Perhaps she knew that 
device of Tozer, of which the minister yet 
was not aware ; but Arthur for once was too 
peremptory and decided for his mother. She 
who knew how to yield when resistance was 
impossible, had to give in to him at last. It 
was better to stay at home, anxious as her 
heart was, than to exasperate her boy, who had 
so many otherKthings to trouble him. With 


much heroism the widow took off her bon- 
net again and returned to Susan’s room. 
There could be little doubt now what tho 
minister was going to do. While she seated 
herself once more by her daughter’s bedside, 
in a patience which was all but unbearable, 
her son went alone to his last meeting with 
his flock. He walked rapidly through Grove 
Street, going through the stream of Salem 
people, who were moving in twos and threes 
in the same direction. A little excitement 
had sprung up in Carlingford on the occasion. 
The public in general had begun to find out, 
as the public generally does, that here was a 
man who was apt to make disclosures not 
only of his opinions but of himself wherever 
he appeared, and that a chance was hereby 
afforded to the common eye of seeing that 
curious phenomenon, a human spirit in action 
— a human heart as it throbbed and changed 
— a sight more interesting thlfii any other 
dramatic performance under heaven. There 
was an unusual throng that night . in Grove 
Street, and the audience was not less amazed 
than the minister when they found what 
awaited them in the Salem schoolroom. 
There Phoebe Tozer and her sister-spirits 
had been busy all day. Again there were 
evergreen wreaths on the walls, and the stiff 
iron gas-lights were bristling with holly. 
Phoebe’s genius had even gone further than 
on the last great occasion, for there were pink 
and white roses among the green lehves, and 
one of the texts which hung on the wall, had 
been temporarily elevated over the platform, 
framed in ■wreaths and supported by extem- 
pore fastenings, the doubtful security of 
which filled Phoebe’s artless soul with many 
a pang of terror. It was the tender injunc- 
tion, “ Love one another,” which had been 
elevated to this post of honor, and this was 
the first thing which met Vincent’s eye as he 
entered the room. Underneath, the platform- 
table was already filled with the elite of the 
flock. The ladies were all in their best bon- 
nets in that favored circle, and Tozer stood 
glorious in his Sunday attire — but in his own 
mind privately a little anxious as to the ef- 
fect of all this upon the sensitive mind of the 
minister — by the side of the empty chair* 
which had been left for the president of the 
assembly. When Vincent was seen to enter, 
it was Tozer who gave the signal for a burst 
of cheering, which the pleased assembly, 
newly aware of the treat thus provided for it. 


CHRONICLES OF 


performed hearMly with all its boots and um- j 
brellas. Through this applause the minister 
made his way to the platform with abstracted 
looks. The cheer made no difference upon 
the stubborn displeasure and annoyance of 
his face. Nothing that could possibly have 
been done to aggravate his impatient spirit 
and make his resolve unalterable, could have 
> been more entirely successful than poor 
( Tozerjs expedient for the conciliation of the 
I flock. Angry, displeased, humbled in his 
f own estimation, the unfortunate pastor made 
i his way through the people, who were all 
) smiles and conscious favor. A curt general 
» bow and cold courtesy was all he had even 
; for his friends on the platform, who beamed 
I upon him as he advanced. He was not mol- 
1 lified by the universal applause ; he was not 
c to be moved to complaisance by any such 
) argument. He would not take the chair, 
t though Tozer, with anxious officiousness, put 
, it ready for him, and Phoebe looked up with 
( looks of entreaty from behind the urn. In the 
sight of all the people he refused the honor, 

I and sat down on a little supernumerary 

5 seat behind, where he was not visible to the 
; increasing crowd. This refusal sent a thrill 
i through all the anxious deacons on the plat- 
( form. They gathered round him to make 
j remonstrances, to which the minister paid 
) no regard. It was a dreadful moment. No- 
f body knew what to do in the emergency. 
1 The tlirong streamed in till there was no 
\ longer an inch of standing-ground, nor a sin- 
j gle seat vacant, except that one empty chair 
i which perplexed the assembly. The urns 

began to smoke less hotly ; the crowd gave 
murmurous indications of impatience as the 
deacons cogitated — What was to be done ? 
— the tea at least must not be permitted to 
I get cold. At last Mr. Brown stood up and 
I proposed feebly, that as Mr. Vincent did not 
i wish to preside, Mr. Tozer should be chair- 
i man on this joyful occasion. The Salem 

6 folks, who thought it a pity to neglect the 
I good things before them, assented with some 
I perplexity, and then the business of the even- 
I ing began. 

I It was very lively business for the first 

I half-hour. Poor Mrs. Tufton, who ^ was 
seated immediately in front of the minister, 
disturbed by his impatient movements, took 
fright for the young man ; and could not but 
i wonder in herself how people managed to 
, eat cake and drink tea in such an impromptu 


CARLINGFORD. 301 

fashion, who doubtless had partaken of that 
meal before leaving home, as she justly re- 
flected. The old minister’s wife stood by the 
young minister with a natural esprit de corps, 
and was more anxious than she could ac- 
count for. A certain cloud subdued the 
hilarity of the table altogether; everybody 
was aware of the dark visage of the minis- 
ter, indignant and annoyed, behind. A cer- 
tain hush was upon the talk, and Tozer him- 
self had grown pale in the chair, where the 
good butterman by no means enjoyed his 
dignity. Tozer was not so eloquent as usual 
when he got up to speak. He told the re- 
freshed and exhilarated flock that he had 
made bold to give them a little treat, out of 
his own head, seeing that everything had 
gone off * satisfactory last night ; and they 
would agree with hiin as the minister had no 
call to take no further trouble in the way of 
explanations. A storm of applause was the 
response of the Salem folks to this sugges- 
tion ; they were in the highest good-humor 
both with themselves and the minister — 
ready to vote him a silver tea-service on the 
spot, if anybody had been prompt enough to 
suggest it. But a certain awe stole over 
even that delighted assembly when Mr. Vin- 
cent came forward to the front of the table 
and confronted them all, turning his back 
upon his Toyal supporters. They did not 
know what to make of the dark aspect and 
clouded face of the pastor, relieved aS it was 
against the alarmed and anxious counte- 
nances behind him. A panic seized upon 
Salem : something which they had not anti- 
cipated — something very different from the 
programme — was in the minister’s eye. 

The Pigeons were in a back seat — very 
far back, where Mrs. Vincent had been the 
previous evening — spies to see what was 
going on, plotting the Temperance Hall and 
an opposition preacher in their treacherous 
hearts ; but even Mrs. Pigeon bent forward 
with excitement in the general flutter. When 
the minister said “ My friends,” you could 
have heard a pin drop in the crowded meet- 
ing ; and when, a minute after, a leaf of 
holly detached itself and fluttered down from 
one of the gas-lights, the whole row of peo- 
ple among whom it fell thrilled as if they 
had received a blow. Hush ! perhaps it is 
not going to be so bad after all. He is talk- 
ing of the text there over the platform, in its 
evergreen frame, twhich Phoebe trembles to 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


302 

think may come down any moment with a 
crash upon her father’s anxious head. “ Love 
one another ! ” Is Mr. Vincent telling them 
that he is not sure what that means, though 
he is a minister— that he is not very sure 
what anything means— that life is a great 
wonder; and that he only faintly guesses how 
God, being pitiful, had the heart to make 
man and leave him on this sad earth ? Is 
that what he says as he stands pale before 
the silent assembly, which scarcely dares 
draw breath, and is ashamed of its own 
lightness of heart and vulgar satisfaction 
with things in general ? That is what the 
minister says. “ The way is full of such pit- 
falls — the clouds so heavy overhead — the 
heavens, so calm and indifferent, out of reach 
— cannot we take hands and help each other 
through this troubled journey ? ” says the 
orator, with a low voice and solemn eyes. 
When he pauses thus and looks them all in 
the face, the heart of Salem fails. The very 
gas-lights seem to darken in the air, in the 
silence, and there is not one of the managers 
who does not hear the beating of his own 
heart. Then suddenly the speaker raises 
his voice, raises his hand, storms over their 
heads in a burst of indignation not loud but 
grand. He says “ No.” — “ No ! ” exclaims 
the minister — “ not in the world, not in the 
Church, nowhere on earth can we’ be unani- 
mous except by moments. We throw our 
brother down, and then extend a hand to 
him in charity — but we have lost the art of 
standing side by side. Love ! it means that 
you secure aj certain woman to yourself to 
make your hearth bright, and to be yours 
forever ; it means that you have children 
who are yours, to perpetuate your name and 
your tastes and feelings. It does not mean 
that you stand by your brother for him and 
not for you ! ” 

Then there followed another pause. The 
Salem people drew a long breath and 
looked in each other’s faces. They were 
guilty, self-convicted ; but they could not 
tell what was to come of it, nor guess what 
the speaker meant. The anxious faces be- 
hind, gazing at him and his audience, were 
blank and horror-stricken, like so many Con- 
spirators whose leader was betraying their 
cause. They could not tell what accusation 
he might be going to piake against them, to 
be confirmed by their consciences ; but no- 


body except Tozer had the least conception 
what he was about to say. 

The minister resumed his interrupted 
speech. Nobody had ventured to cheer him ; 
but during his last pause, seeing that he 
himself waited, and by way of cheering up 
their own troubled hearts, a few feeble and 
timid plaudits rose from the further end of 
the room. Mr. Vincent hurriedly resumed 
to stop this, with characteristic impatience. 
“Wait, before you applaud me,” said the 
Nonconformist. “ I have said nothing that 
calls for applause. I have something more 
to tell you — more novel than what I have 
been saying. I am going to leave Carling- 
ford. It was you who elected me, it is you 
who have censured me,*it was you last night 
who consented to look over my faults and 
give me a new trial. I am one of those who 
have boasted in my day that I received my 
title to ordination from no bishop, from no 
temporal provision, from no traditionary 
church, but^from the hands of the people. 
Perhaps I am less sure than I was at first, 
when you were all disposed to praise me, 
that the voice of the people is the voice of 
God ; but, however that may be, what I re- 
ceived from you I can but render up to you. 
I resign into your hands your pulpit, which 
you have erected with your money, and hold 
as your property. I cannot hold it as your 
vassal. If there is any truth in the old phrase 
which calls a church a cure of souls, it is 
certain that no cure of souls can be dele- 
gated to a preacher by the souls themselves 
who are to be his care. I find my old theo- 
ries inadequate to the position in which I 
find myself, and all I can do is to give up the 
post where they have left me in the lurch. 
I am either your servant, responsible to you, 
or God’s servant, responsible to him — which 
is it ? I cannot tell ; but no man can serve 
two masters, as you know. Many of you 
have been kind to me — chief among all,” 
said Vincent, turning once round to look in 
Tozer’s anxious face, “ my friend here, who 
has spared no pains either to make me such 
a pastor as you wished, or to content me with 
that place when he had secured it. I cannot 
be content. It is no longer possible. So 
there remains nothing but to say good-by — 
good-by ! — farewell — I will see you again to 
say it more formally. I only wish you to 
understand now that this is the decision I 


CHROJSICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 303 


have come to, and that I consider myself no 
j longer the minister of Salem from this night.” 

'Vincent drew back instantly when he had 
1 said these words, but not before half the 

I people on the platform had got up on their 

I feet, and many had risen in the body of 

\ the room. The women stretched out their 

! hands to him with gestures of remonstranec 

and entreaty. “He don’t mean it; he’s 
t not going for to leave us ; he’s in a lit- 
I tie pet, that’s all,” cried Mrs. Brown, loud 
> out Phoebe Tozer, forgetting all about the 
I text and the evergreens, had buried her face 
i in her handkerchief and was weeping, not 
without demonstration of the fact. Tozer 
, himself grasped at the minister’s shoulder, 
I' and called out to the astonished assembly 
that “ they weren’t to take no notice. Mr. 
"Vincent would hear reason. They weren’t 
i a-going to let him go, not like this.” The 
’ minister had almost to struggle through the 
group of remonstrant deacons. “ You don’t 
I mean it, Mr. Vincent ? ” said Mrs. Tozer ; 

“ only say as it’s a bit o’ temper, and you 
5 don’t mean it ! ” Phoebe, on her part, raised 
j a tear-wet cheek to hearken to the pastor’s 
reply ; but the pastor only shook his head, 
and made no answer to the eager appeals 
' which ‘assailed him. When he had extri- 
; cated himself from their hands and outcries, 
' he hastened down the tumultuous and nar- 
^ row passage between the benches, where he 
i would not hear anything that was addressed 
i to him, but passed through with a brief nod 
) to his anxious friends. Just as Vincent 
: reached the door, he perceived, with eyes 
f which excitement had made clearer than 
: usual, that his enemy. Pigeon, had just got 
J to his feet, who shouted out that the pastor 
had spoken up handsome, and that there 
; wasn’t one in Salem, whatever was their in- 
T clinations, as did not respect him that day. 

Though he paid no visible attention to the 
r words, perhaps the submission of his adver- 
sary gave a certain satisfaction to the min- 
ister’s soul ; but he took no notice of this 
1 nor anything else, as he hurried out into the 
i silent street, where the lamps were lighted, 
t and the stars shining unobserved overhead. 
i Not less dark than the night were the pros- 
I pects which lay before him. He did not 
i know what he was to do — could not see a 
i day before him of his new ‘career ; but, nev- 
ertheless, took his way out of Salem with a 


sense of freedom, and a thrill of new power 
and vigor in his heart. - 
' Behind he*left a most tumultuous and dis- 
orderly meeting. After the first outburst 
of dismay and sudden popular desire to re- 
tain the impossible possession which had 
thus slid out of their hands — after Tozer’s 
distressed entreaty that they would all wait 
and see if Mr. Vincent didn’t hear reason — 
after Pigeon’s reluctant withdrawal of en- 
mity and burst of admiration, the meeting 
broke up into knots, and became not one 
meeting, but a succession of groups, all buz- 
zing in different tones over the great event. 
Resolutions, however, were proposed and 
carried all the same. Another deputation 
was appointed to wait on Mr. Vincent. A 
proposal was made to raise his “ salary,” 
and a subscription instituted on the spot to 
present him with a testimonial. When all 
these things were concluded, nothingremained 
but to dismiss the assembly, which dispersed 
not without hopes of a satisfactory conclu- 
sion. The deacons remained for a final con- 
sultation, perplexed with alarms and doubts. 
The repentant Pigeon, restored to them by 
this emergency, was the most hopeful of all. 
Circumstances which had changed his mind 
must surely influence the pastor. An addi- 
tional fifty pounds of “ salary ” — a piece of 
plate — a congregational ovation — was it to 
be supposed that any Dissenting minister 
bred at Homerton could withstand such con- 
ciliatory overtures as these ? 

CHAPTER XLIII. 

But the deputation and the increased sal- 
ary and the silver salver were all ineffectual. 
Arthur would not hear reasbn, as his mother 
knew. It was with bitter restrained tears 
of disappointment and vexation that she 
heard from him, when he returned to that 
conference in Susan’s room, the events of the 
evening. It came hard upon the widow, 
who had invited her son to his sister’s bed- 
side that they might for the first time talk 
together as of old over all their plans. But 
though her heart ached over the opportunity 
thus thrown away, and though she asked 
herself with terror, “ What was Arthur to 
do now ? ” his mother knew he was not to 
be persuaded. She smiled on Tozer next 
morning, ready to cry with vexation and 
anxiety as she was. “ When my son has 


SALEM CHAPEL. 


304 


made up his mind, it will be vain for any one 
to try to move him,” said the widow, proud 
of him in spite of all, though her heart cried 
out against his imprudence and foolishness ; 
and so it proved. The minister made his 
acknowledgments so heartily to the good 
butterman, that Tozer’s disclaimer of any 
special merit, and declaration that he had 
but tried to “ do his dooty,” was made with 
great faltering and unsteadiness ; but the 
Nonconformist himself never wavered in his 
resolve. Half of Carlingford sat in tears to 
hear Mr. Vincent’s last sermon. Such a 
discourse had never been heard in Salem. 
Scarcely one of the deacons could find a place 
in the crowded chapel to which all the world 
rushed ; and Tozer himself listened to the last 
address of his minister from one of the doors 
of the gallery, where his face formed the apex 
and culminating point of the crowd to Mr. 
Vincent’s eyes. When Tozer brushed his 
red handkerchief across his face, as he was 
moved to do two or three times in the course 
of the sermon, the gleam seemed to the min- 
ister, who was himself somewhat excited, to 
redden over the entire throng. It was thus 
that Mr. Vincent ended his connection with 
Salem Chapel. It was a heavy blow to the 
congregation for the time — ^so heavy that the 
spirit of the butterman yielded ; he^was not 
seen in his familiar seat for three full Sun- 
days after ; but the place was mismanaged 
in Pigeon’s hands, and regard for the con- 
nection brought Tozer to the rescue. They 
had Mr. Beecher down from Homerton, who 
liiade a very good impression. The subse- 
quent events are so well known in Carling- 
ford, that it is hardly necessary to mention 
the marriage of the new minister, '.vhich took 
place about six months afterwards. Old 
Mr. Tufton blessed the union of his dear 
young brother with the blushing Phoebe, 
who made a most suitable minister’s wife in 
Salem after the first disagreeables were over ; 
and Mr. Beecher proved a great deal more 
tractable than any man of genius. If he was 
not quite equal to Mr. Vincent in the pulpit, 
he was much more complaisant at all the 
tea-parties ; and, after a year’s experience, 
was fully acknowledged, both by himself and 
others, to have made an ’it. 

Vincent meanwhile plunged into that 
world of life which the young man did not 
know ; not that matters looked badly for him 
when he left Carlingford— on the contrary, 


the connection in general thrilled to hedr of 
his conduct and his speech. The enthusiasm 
in Homerton was too great to be kept within 
bounds. Such a demonstration of the right- 
ful claims of the preacher had not been 
made before in the memory of man ; and the 
enlightened Nonconforming community did 
honor to the martyr. Three vacant congre- 
gations at least wooed him to their pulpits ; 
his fame spread over the country : but he 
did not accept any of these invitations ; and 
after a while the eminent Dissenting fami- 
lies who invited him to dinner, found so 
many other independencies cropping out in 
the young man, that the light of their coun- 
tenances dimmed .upon him. It began to 
be popularly reported, that a man so apt to 
hold opinions of his own, and so con- 
vinced of the dignity of his office, had best 
have been in the Church where people 
knew no better. Such, perhaps, might 
have been the conclusion to which he came 
himself; but education and prejudice and 
Homerton stood invincible in the way. A 
Church of the Future — an ideal corporation, 
grand and primitive, not yet realized, but 
surely real, to be come at one day — shone 
before his eyes, as it shines before so many ; 
but, in the mean time, the Nonconformist 
went into literature, as was natural, and was, 
it is believed in Carlingford, the founder of 
the Philosophical Review, that new organ 
of public opinion. He had his battle to 
fight, and fought it out in silence, saying 
little to any one. Sundry old arrows were 
in his heart, still quivering by times as he 
fought with the devil and the world in his 
desert ; but he thought himself almost pros- 
perous, and perfectly composed and eased 
of all fanciful and sentimental sorrows, 
when he went, two or three years after these 
events, to Folkestone, to meet his mother 
and sister, who had been living abroad, away 
from him, with their charge, and to bring 
them to the little house he had prepared for 
them in London, and where he said to him- 
self he was prepared, along with them — a 
contented but neutral-colored household — 
to live out his life. 

But when Mr. Vincent met his mother at 
Folkestone, not even the haze of the spring 
evening, nor the agitation of the meeting, 
which brought back again so forcibly all the 
events which accompanied the parting, could 
soften to him the wonderful thrill of sur- 


CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD. 305 


i prise, almost a shock, with which he looked 
i upon two of the party. The widow, in her 
; close white cap and black bonnet, was un- 
changed as when she fell, worn out, into his 
; arms, on her first visit to Carlingford. She 
gave a little cry of joy as she saw her son. 
She trembled so with emotion and happiness, 
that he had to steady her on his arm and 
restrain his own feelings till another time. 
The other two walked by their side to the 
hotel where they were to rest all night. He 
had kissed Susan in the faint evening light, 

i but her brother did not know that grand fig- 
I ure, large and calm and noble like a Roman 
j woman, at whom the other passengers 
1 paused to look as they went on ; and his first 
j glance at the younger face by her side sent 
I the blood back to his heart with a sudden 
I pang and thrill which filled him with amaze- 
) ment at himself. He heard the two talking 
I to each other as they went up the crowded 
‘ pier in the twilight, like a man walk- 
; ing in a dream. What his mother said 
I leaning on his arm, scarcely caught his at- 
j tention. He answered to her in monsylla- 
I bles, and listened to the voices — the low, 
I sweet laughter, the sound of familiar names. 
I Nothing in Susan’s girlish looks had proph- 
I esied that majestic figure, that air of quiet 
I command and power. And a wilder wonder 
i: still attracted the young man’s heart as he 

listened to the beautiful young voice which 
kept calling on Susan, Susan, like some 
sweet echo of a song. These two, had they 
been into another world, an enchanted coun- 
^ try? When they came into the lighted 
room, and he saw them divest themselves of 
their wrappings, and beheld them before him, 
visible tangible creatures and no dreams, 
Vincent was struck dumb. He seemed to 
himself to have been suddenly carried out of 
the meaner struggles of his own life into the 
air of a court, the society of princes. When 
Susan came up to him and laid her two 
beautiful hands on his shoulders, and looked 
with her blue eyes into his face, it was all he 
coul i do to preserve his composure, and con- 
ceal the almost awe which possessed him. 
" he wide sleeve had fallen back from her 
round beauilful arm. It was the same arm 
that used to lie stretched out uncovered 
upon her sick-bed like a glorious piece of 

ii marble. Her brother could scarcely rejoice 
I in the change, it struck him with so much 
i wonder, and was so different from his 


thoughts. Poor Susan ! he had said in his 
heart for many a day. He could not say 
poor Susan now. 

“ Arthur does not know me,” she said, 
with a low, liquid voice, fuller than the com- 
mon tones of women. “ He forgets how 
long it is ago since we went away. He 
thinks you cannot have anything so big be- 
longing to you, my little mother. But it is 
me, Arthur. Susan all the same.” 

“ Susan perhaps, since you say so — but 
not all the same,” said Arthur, with his as- 
tonished eyes. 

“ And I dare say you don’t know Alice 
either,” said his sister. “ I was little and 
Alice was foolish when we went away. At 
least I was little in Lonsdale, where nobody 
minded me. Somehow most people mind 
me now, because I am so big, I suppose ; 
and Alice, instead of being foolish, is a little 
wise woman. Come here, Alice, and let my 
brother see you. You have heard of him 
every day for three years. At last here is 
Arthur ; but what am I to do if he has for- 
gotten me ? ” 

“ I have forgotten neither of you,” said 
the young man. He was glad to escape 
from Susan’s eyes, which somehow looked 
as if they were a bit of the sky, a deep se- 
rene of blue J and the little Alice imagined 
he did not look at her at all, and was a little 
mortified in her tender heart. Things began 
to grow familiar to him after a while. How- 
ever wonderful they were, they were real 
creatures, who did not vanish away, but 
were close by him all the evening, moving 
about — this with lovely fairy lightness, that 
with majestic maiden grace — talking in a 
kind of dual harmonious movement of sound, 
filling the soft spring night with a world of 
vague and strange fascination. The window 
was opened in their sitting-room, where they 
could see the lights and moving figures, and, 
farther off, the sea — and hear outside the 
English voices, which were sweet to hear to 
the strangers newly come home. Vincent, 
while he recovered himself, stood near this 
window by his mother’s chair, paying her 
such stray filial attentions as he could in the 
bewilderment of his soul, slowly becoming 
used to the two beautiful young women, un- 
expected apparitions, who transformed life 
itself and everything in it. Was one his 
real sister, strange as it seemed ? and the 

other- ? Vincent fell back and resigned 

20 


SALEM CHAPEL 


306 

himself to the strange, sweet, unlooked-for 
influence. They went up to London together 
next day. Sunshine did not disperse them 
^ into beautiful mists, as he had almost feared. 
It came upon him' by glimpses to see that 
fiery sorrow and passion had acted like some 
tropical tempestuous sun upon his sister’s 
youth ; and the face- of his love looked back 
upon him from the storm in which it died, 
as if somehow what was impossible might be 
possible again. . Mrs. Mildmay, a wandering 
restless soul as she was, happened to be ab- 
sent from London just then. Alice was 
still to stay with her dearest friends. The 
Nonconformist went back to his little home 
with the sensation of an enchanted prince in 
a fairy tale. Instead of the mud-colored ex- 
istence, what a glowing, brilliant firmament ! 
Life became glorious again under their touch. 
As for Mrs. Vincent, she was too happy in 
getting home — in seeing Susan, after all the 
anguishes and struggles which no one knew 
of fully but herself, rising up in all the 


strength of her youth to this renewed exist- 
ence — to feel as much distressed as she ^ex- 
pected about Arthur’s temporary withdrawal 
from his profession. It was only a tempo- 
rary withdrawal, she hoped. He still wore 
his clerical coat, and called himself “ clergy- | 
man” in the Blue Book — and he was doing, j 
well, though he was not preaching. The I 
Nonconformist himself naturally was less, f 
sober in his thoughts. He could not tell | 
what wonderful thing he might not yet do in j 
this wonderful elevation and new inspiring * 
of his heart. His genius broke forth out of 
the clouds. Seeing these two as they went 
about the house, hearing their voices as they • 
talked in perpetual sweet accord, with ■ 
sweeter jars of difference, surprised the ' 
young man’s life out of all its shadows — one 

of them his sister — the other . After all I 

his troubles, the loves and the hopes came ' 
back with the swallows to build under his 
eaves and stir in his heart. 


THE END. 


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